Now I have a a toss-up between good or bad. Let’s go with the bad, then the good.

I will try to keep this paragraph relatively spoiler-free, but I have been watching a certain show set in 1963 on torrents, and so yes, you can expect that Mad Men WILL deal with the assassination of JFK (oh, spoiler alert, apparently the president got assasinated in November 1963..) and I was watching that episode last night and because of course, much like you, my moment of “This is history happening right now” was 9/11, and so it was all played out in flashback sequences last night, the starting on Fluox, the Buffy episode at 3am, the flicking to the news channel, the “oh wow, what movie is this?”, the text messages to Kateh and Thomas, the wondering whether or not to wake Clayton, and then the flatmate hunt in the weeks after, but most relevantly, EM’s letters about what he told his son about the bad men when his son’s cartoons were taken off the air. It’s 2009, EM, shouldn’t you be emailing me right now?

But oh, the happy anniversaries! They can wipe out all the badness. And this is where the glee comes in, with going to Christchurch for one night for Harvestbird and Ned’s wedding. I feel very tongue-tied and inadequate and actually quite useless in recording such a lovely mellow event (although I can say that some dumbass Kwikimart clerk gave me terrible directions and it took me 30 minutes to walk to the bar instead of two), but what I can do instead is embed a drunken video for you that I took of the crazy lights in my crazy hotel room:

Apart from that, Christchurch was AWESOME! There was the girl on the plane who recognised me from a rollerderby match (“you’re Jo from Pretty Pretty aren’t you?”) who gave me a tour around the city to my hotel and an adventurous trip back to the airport the next day. There were hungover drinks with Emma Hart who managed to make ME blush which is practically as unheard of as the word “squozen” and the brunch the next day with Kebabette at C1.

I know Kebabette from PPP, so this is a good time to say how awesome the Pretty Pretty Party was. Also awesome? The Pride & Prejudice & Zombies ball. There are great pics on that link, by the way. I do so really love to dance, and the girls and boys at that dance swept me off my feet and all over the floor and I really should have hitched up my skirt better so I wouldn’t have slipped over so much. The fact that I ended up crying behind my (Theresa’s) fan at Motel later that night and sending texts to inappropriate people because I wanted some attention is clearly irrelevant. Honest!

I had a period for like, almost two weeks or something? Which was annoying but at least it kind of made my body make sense. Now I’ve got a three-week contract working from home but all I seem to want to do is take naps, so my hours are a little sporadic and off the standard chart. I have Fridays in the office to ground me however, and I feel really good and confident about the work I am doing. It is very much aligned with my skill set and close to my heart. Someone commented to me on Facebook the other day about how they can’t believe that I still don’t have a job yet and I feel pretty much the same way that they do, only more so.

El moved out but a lovely girl from Twitter who is on Brutal Pagaent (boo!) at Roller Derby (yay!) will be moving in. Brent’s going to move in with his girlfriend so I still need another flatmate. My social calendar is insanely busy. Hubris wasn’t updated for a while, but now it is. Good. Gossip Girl time now, right?

Except Lisa has me watching a Pearl Jam clip where they’re singing ‘Black’ and I expect him to start singing “We…belong…together” like he does in the Unplugged video, not altogether too different from Campbell Scott (that’s right, isn’t it Jessie? I get the two confused) in Singles but then he sings lines from ‘Good Woman’ instead about how he’s lying when he says he doesn’t love me no more, and oh, they’re too much like a text message when someone said that they were going to say that they were over me because they were weak, and oh, fuck you Obama, I am holding you entirely responsible for this, apart from the parts that are Guy Fawke’s fucking doings..

My first memories of the Brown Sugar Cafe, (probably from 1997 going up to check on AUT, and then on so many subsequent trips back and from Auckland, including one particularly memorable road trip to Mark F’s 21 where Jo (starla) only got to come along because she returned a teaspoon to her mother in time) were of me drinking cappuccinos, which came with a chocolate-covered coffee bean on the spoon, They used to have monstrously big foccaia sandwiches filled with tomato, alfalfa and thick long slices of Camembert cut all the way across the wheel, and they cost something like $5, but no more. They do still have chicken and cashew croissants, but they’re smaller, staler, and my bill for a tiny croissant, a juice and a bacon in cibatta was $18. State High Way One Robbery, I tell you!

But that area is my most favouritest to drive in, so off I set, cranking up Eight Arms To Hold You and realising that I know all the words still, and – as I twittered once i got off the Desert Road – their songs have essentially the same structure as my essays I used to write in fifth form. Introduce your theme, provide three examples, sum up. And these sheets smell like bayous, not mine, not yours, not yours. It was sweaty and hot, and on the Desert Road all I could think about was the piece I wrote called ‘North of You’ in 101 Stories That I Want To Tell You, and hey, it’s 2009, you’re going to contact me, right? It’s been three years. But it was a different person’s handprint that I have burned into my thighs. I fucking hate being left alone to my thoughts all day eh. It was like every single line of every song I sung was directly applicable to me – even when I switched away from Birds to Britney Spears in total desperation.

There was tar on my shoes from Taihape, which made the pedals sticky and somewhat scary to operate. When I got a can of the newly redesigned coke from the Tairua Caltex and waited an eternity for their one bathroom because it was just after 5pm when the public toilets close, it exploded on me in the car. I lost my glasses somewhere before Hamilton and spent a frenzied frantic ten minutes tearing my car apart to re-find them. I got stuck behind a Newman’s coach liner from Hamilton to Huntly, and then I overshot the city because I got confused about Great South Road and State Highway One and ended up on the expressway to Auckland before I manged to call the Romantic Getaways place and finally found it. I was overwhelmed by seeing Kat again, and trying to hustle into my room, and trying to get a shower, and discovering that my room hasn’t been renovated at all, and in fact they’d given me a single bed because I’M NOT MARRIED but Kat insisted that I’d paid for a double so I may in fact be sleeping on the owners’ bed, and that is why I only have two pillows, despite all the other furniture piled up in this room. Half the corridors here are still linoleum, and i need to use school-camp quality bathrooms – unless I go down to K&K’s honeymoon suite, where their shower has two heads, and oh yes, I had them both going, at different temperatures on top of me and I giggled and giggled and giggled at the sensation, and also at the thought of wasting all that water, and then Kane came back to his room and I told him that his wedding treat was waiting for him, and oh how we laughed!

Eventually after more cat-herding than even I would ever be able to deal with (parents, cousins, brothers, oldies, littlies) we headed down the hill to the Old Courthouse Cafe for a lot more waiting for late people. I got some wine as soon as was civilized to do so, and oh, it was nice, It’s been hard being so dry lately when my friends are all so wet, The staff were very unsure with wines, but the wood-fired scotch fillet was oh my fricking good amazing.

More cat-herding found me and Kat and Brooke and Vanessa in Kat’s suite, ever so vaguely watching The Princess Bride, while Brooke practised doing Kat’s makeup, and Vanessa and I had facials and hand jobs. I’ll put links in to the appropriate PPP posts when I have internet, I swear. But now I might find my book, see if I can read little while I wait for zopiclone, and get my eyes ready to cry lots tomorrow! OMG OMG OMG! They’re getting married!

And that might explain today’s total mood crash, and why I just fucking wish I could get fired so I could go on the dole or the sickness benefit and how I could stay in bed where everything is warm and safe and okay. It is ridiculous how scared I am to go to work, and how much I feel like I am letting the team down just for existing, but at the same time the assumption that because I took a couple of days off and because i am taking my medication regularly that all my problems have ceased to exist. I cannot get to work by 9am. I just can’t. I can’t sleep, I can’t wake up, I can’t get out of bed. How does the rest of the world do it? I can’t function like that. And holy fuck how much do I hate using the word “can’t”?

This weekend was good. We had a bit of a beer sampling here, with a sausage fest, and then tucking people up on the couch and in the spare room. On Anzac Day I hid, and then on Saturday Heather arrived, and I went to Bar Camp, and then that night we went to Shirley’s for the Unofficial Pretty Pretty Pretty launch party, which was all beauty products and amazing food, and videos, and Lisa Fur gave me a handrub that made me purr. And then the day after Heather and I had brunch at Elements, and then had BLOGFEST 2008, in which we sat down at my dining room table, and blogged for three hours straight. In that time I uploaded a fuckload of photos to flickr with tags, fixed all the colours on Pretty Pretty Pretty since the original purple that I changed the images of the template to weren’t in sexy-hexy-decimal, posted to the Wellingtonista, changed the Aucklandista template (my awesomeness was further enforced today when I managed to do what Heather failed to do yesterday – get images and links to work on the front page (in her defense, she thought I wanted exerpts instead of full posts, but I didn’t), and THEN I figured out the php to add in tags to posts and THEN I built (read: stole) some php to make it have rotating header images. SO AWESOME. I like being productive. But that did of course emphasise the suckiness of having a full time job that is not blogging, at least not blogging for the things that I love. And I know that work has been very accomodating of my recent bout of craziness, but it’s just not as easy to shake as you might think. Or probably don’t think, because you’re on the internets and therefore you’re probably already crazy too.

Miss Amy came over tonight for MakeMonday, and we wrote up our big post about our first PPP party, and while she had to go, she left me and Heather with an awesome foot-care package, so we poured ourselves a glass of bubbly and barricaded ourselves in the bathroom with zabuton (flat Japanese pillows) to perch on the sharp edge of my bath and soak our feet in mint & lavender goodness. It felt lovely, and so I decided to have a huge big bawling sob session. Awesome. Half the time Heather thought I was laughing when it was actually guttural sobs, but half the time I was laughing too, because I am pathetic and lame, and far too fucking hard on myself. It is hard to be me, and yes, that’s fucking stupid, I’m this educated smart girl with these fantastic support networks and a job, and a family, and flatmates, some of whom clean the kitchen every night, and this cat who knows that I am the centre of his universe, and a fantastic counselor who I obviously need to go and see, and yet, it is hard for me.

Some things shake me a lot from out of nowhere. Like, what happens when something happens to someone you used to love? Something awful, and when you find out about it, it throws you for the whole afternoon, but of course, it is not about you, it’s about how best to respond, to say something, to do something if it’s needed. How do you be there when you haven’t been there for many years, no matter what the reason?

I have found that lately there has been a reoccuring theme, and you know what? It’s not even lately. I just want to fix all of my friends’ lives. I want everyone to get their fucking happy ending. I don’t know how to procure those endings though, and I know that I’m not even supposed to. Just, oh, I don’t know. Can’t we all have happy endings? Please? And I don’t mean a happy ending like Jill will deliver you. Well, maybe that.

Oh, but in happy ending news? Here’s a clip from the RASSLIN’ I went to.

It was so fucking great to see Kat’n Kane. We had Rock of Love marathons, and just quiet time together, much like Heather and I are having right now. No alarms and no surprises. Lately it takes MGMT or the Deftones to wake me out of the fog on tthe bus to and from work. I don’t have solutions. I do know though that I missed my meds on Sunday, and so I will blame this on that.

And somewhere out there, unrelated to this, you’re turning 40, or you’re 40 already, and I look forward to your email next year, because that will be another three years, right? And in a thousand other stories, there was a thing that I thought was a thing. Well, not even a thing. It was a tingle. But if I’m honest, it was an amalgamation, it was so many people together. My friends could draw you a picture sight unseen. Still, it was a tingle which was nice to have.

I like wine. And I like my friend Tom, so I went along to chaperone him. Because obviously as an old cougar spinster, I am the ideal chaperone. However, the best thing was that upon arriving, I didn’t feel at all like a cougar. I was at least five years younger than all the other women there. Hurrah!

Actually, that’s a lie. The best thing upon arriving was the glass of delicious bubbly that tasted like it was Italian and prosecco-ish, but was in fact an Australian bubbly chardonnay. We drew numbers out of big jars for our table places, and after another glass of the delicious bubbly, we sat down in groups of three men/three women, and had to announce our star signs. Simple, I’m a Gemini. No one else at the table was, to the best of my recollection. We were poured tastings from a bottle in a brown paper bag, and had to answer three multichoice questions about it. I knew straight away it was a Sav, and I was pretty sure it was from NZ, and Marlbourgh at that. Yay me! But we were assisted in our blind tastings by Nicola’s explanations of what the regional differences were like, had our glasses topped up, and smiled and nodded.

The boys moved over to the next table to be replaced by a new lot, and the question we needed to answer to get was “what kind of car would you be?”. I said I’d like to think I was some big brash mustang convertible in some fantastic colour, but I’d probably be a white prius – not the best kind of hybrid available, and like, so last year in trends”. One guy said he’d be a concept car, and I said “Like Homer’s with the giant cup-holder?” and the table went completely silent and I watched tumbleweeds roll past. Really? REALLY? Not even that basic a Simpsons reference could get recognised? Woah. Tough crowd. And a tougher wine. I think it was a viogner. I can’t remember. Nice work Jo. Perhaps Tom could post if he remembers what the wines were.

In the next group, we had to say what our favourite word was. I thought of a long-gone friend’s long letter to me, and claimed ‘succulent’ as my own. I got to use the word ‘onomatepaia’ in my explanation, which luckily was out loud so I didn’t have to spell it. Someone said “you’ve practiced this answer”. I said “I work in communications”. Other than that, there wasn’t much talk of work. One guy said that his favourite word was ‘Orb’, and I said “so do you like The Orb?” and he was like “well I like the planet earth” and I was like “huh? I meant the early ’90s techno band” and he stared at me like I was crazy, so I was very happy when the guy across the table was like “I like The Orb” and named some of their albums. Finally someone understood me! I wasn’t actually talking crazy after all! In fact, that guy was probably my favourite of the night. He laughed at my jokes, and seemed normal, and didn’t have a mo. I could have put down at the end of the night that I wanted his email address, but that would of course have opened me up to the possibility of rejection, and god forbid I should ever take any chances! We drank some red wine. It was delicious. That’s all I remember about it. Perhaps it was Italian. Or Argentinian.

In the next group, we had to give examples of the best or worst pickup lines we’d ever heard or used. I offered up “Your curtains scare me – can we go to your room?” as laaaaaame (although that worked), and as possibly the best ever, “I’d buy you a drink but I don’t buy girls drinks because they use me too much” as most powerful, because it got us talking, made me buy him a drink to make up for all the other girls, and introduced the user as a wounded flower who obviously needed someone to take care of him. At least three times that night. Heh. We also drank more red wine. There was a girl at my table who was getting most of the wine questions right. The other girl at the table was not very forthcoming with answers. Some of the guys weren’t either. One of the guys in the previous round had said he didn’t have a favourite word. I told him his new favourite word was ‘banana’ and he had to use it in the future. I suspect this meant that he would have had to tell every other group as he went around about it, but somehow I doubt he would have. Shy people freak me out. People at the table talking about how hard it is to meet people when you’re in your thirties and don’t like bars also freak me out a lot. Thank god for being 27.

The next group, with a delicious bubbly shiraz was all about the “naughtiest thing you’ve ever done”. Both Tom and I, comparing notes later, were very much like “Seriously? WTF?” about people’s “naughtiest” stories, which consisted of things like “knocking a book out of a teacher’s hand” at age five, or their boss – not even them – throwing up in a cab. My story was of revenge in a toilet stall. It got shared in front of the whole group. Awesome. At least I was happy to participate. I’d had Lominger Competencies earlier in the morning at work, and had been pissed off then too by people who wouldn’t talk and join in. What’s the point? So I had some more wine, and then ran off to Quiz Night where the quiz master told me to shut up because I was drunk. Heh.

EDIT: Tom says “The second one was a Pinot Gris from Argentina, there was a Malbec there somewhere, plus a Negroamaro from somewhere in southern Italy (Puglia, I think).

Your description of the night was bang on. All I remember was getting drunk quickly and acting too loud and inappropriate for what was pretty much a bunch of wallflowers.”

Of course, he could have commented that for himself, but oh well.

Of course both Lisa and Brad were driving so they sat there laughing at me as I drank more and more to cover up the oh god the pain the pain of the fact that the dinner had originally been planned for six people and I’d spent all Saturday night cooking for it, but of course my group of friends never work to the same schedule that I do (plan something waaaaaaay in advance and they’ll change their minds at the alst minute – plan it at the last minute and they’ll be busy) so consequently there are more chocolate mousses sitting in the frige waiting for me to eat them ath that’s nto a bad thing. There are also six chicken, vege and feta pies in the freezer, leftover saffron risotto in the fridge and I sent the rest of the kumara & corn chowder home with Brad. No one saw how it took me two goes to make three white chocolate spirals – the first time the bag melted. Oh the drama of it all. I love to cook big elabroate meals but I wish it was easier to get peole to come over and eat them. All I really want to do with my life is entertain people.

Lisa and I watched the Birds DVD and it made me sad as Bic Runga can do, and also discussion about the eyar in general made me a little sad because while it’s been a good year on the whole (I’m making 9k more than I used to!), I miss things like the potential of the crush I had in February, and the anticipation of my American holiday and so forth. Now Keanu Reeves is on the television so I must go find another glass of water, Scrubs DVDs and mentally prepare myself for the difficult meetings I have tomorrow. Joy!

The rest of the week will be busy. I must eat my eggplant tomorrow (that’s not a euphemism but rather a “well it fucking cost $4.95″ statement), and then on Tueday I have dinner with Katy, a drink with Karts on Wednesday, Helen’s shop opening on Thursday, and then of course the Wellingtonista Awards on Friday. Woo, vote for me! Um, if you want to.

And now that I have done my pimping, and now that Bjork has been reunited with her besuited (is that bespoke) cat lover on the television and I’m about to explode with cuteness, I can get on with telling you about what I have been up to lately. except uh oh, am I crying? Stupid awesome dancing with cat video. And speaking of cats, here’s some Power. This show rocks.

There was much much Cat Power on Lisa’s car stereo yesterday when we went out to Petone to look at the pier. Turns out it can’t really stand up to its peers (ha HA), but excursions are always nice. Especially if you’re the type of person who has been at home far too much lately watching two seasons’ worth of Arrested Development and trying to figure out if you are more in love with Gob or George-Michael. I am that type of person. Smoo, meanwhile, appears to be gay for Tobias. But I can respect that and not judge him. Much.

I joined a new gym, and learnt how to do their circuit. It’s all about 40 second bursts. The place is a labyrinth, the lockers are tiny and the staff are terrifying in their enthusiasm, but they have a massage bed, box fit classes and it’s two blocks from my work, so that’s a big hurrah. And holy fucking crap it feels so damn fucking good to be exercising again. So good that I must use a multitude of bad words, obviously.

I didn’t go today though because I didn’t want to have to lug my gym bag up to Craftwerk, so I suppose it’s just as well that we had a fire alarm and I had to run down fourteen stories in order not to die in the theoretical burning flames (as opposed to non-burning ones?). I was worried that it’d be crap cos the people I was supposed to go with canceled at the very last minute, but I found a couple of my fellow Wellingtonistas there – Hadyn who was there with his awesome John Campbell shirts, and Martha was of course pimping out her tshirts that are too Babylicious for you babe (Also: Lisa has some disturbing but AWESOME music in her car. Hence the Destiny references). I bought some artwork and some tiki earrings and then settled down to drink wine with Martha and whine. Then I dropped my artwork off at Karen’s house because I didn’t want to carry it any further and came home.

A couple of days ago I went into hotmail to retreive an ex cow’s email address because I don’t have MSN at work, and I found out that because I hadn’t been into hotmail in a while they reset my account. This means that if I hadn’t copied it out into 101 Stories I would have lost the very first love letter I ever wrote anyone, Tori Amos and Barbara Kruger quotes and all. It also means that I lost the whole folder of yours and my email corrospondence from back in the day, which made me seek out the printed version to make sure it actually existed because I am still waiting for a reply to an email from April. Which I’ll get in 2009. Maybe. But I reread the letters, and I started wondering if I’d made you up, would I have included as many apostrophe catastrophes on purpose, to make you more flawed and therefore more believeable, or would I have just been too anal to allow that? I know that if I’d made you up I’d never have chosen Posh Spice as your favourite spice girl. That’s just indecent now, although I suppose she wasn’t Skeletor then. But I didn’t make it up. I suppose it’s beside the point anyways, as now Watch This Space has finished, and I can go and have my bath now. Janice is waiting for me after all. But before I go, did Chris Cornell really have to do a James Bond theme?

I felt not unlike this on Saturday. Almost everyone had a reason – although many of those reasons were “I’m too hungover/tired” but the fact that not a single person from the tripleK came to our party made me more than a little unhappy. Yes, I have too many parties, and timing was off, and they’re not responsible for my insecurities, and I’m just being a dick, but ouch. Still, mad props must go to those who did actually make it, and I had a thoroughly amusing time, most of which seemed to be spent talking about circumcision. And distributing 105 vodka jelly shots. And the house didn’t get trashed, and I didn’t punch Bart in the face again (in my defense, he apparently asked me to, and I said that I didn’t hit boys with glasses so he took them off – you can’t get more asking for it than that, except of course if you have the misfortune to be a woman), so that’s got to be good, right?

I have yet to find a job, but I have found a bach for the tripleK for New Year’s, and I have found a flatmate, so that’s 2/3 and we know how Meatloaf feels about that. And he was in the greatest movie ever made, which we may watch when we do the UK for Country Club, assuming I still keep doing Country Club, which I’m sure I will as soon as I do some cardio and shake off this funk, and so therefore it must be okay.

I am looking forward to the summer, especially the four nights that will be spent in the Orongorongos. It’s also only FIVE WEEKS til I go to the States. I think I’m going to buy a new mp3 player before I go, just a 1gb $99 one that I can give to Karen for Xmas afterwards maybe, or keep because it’s got a dictaphone built in. Assuming I’ll actually get my laptop back before I go, of course. Bah. Both the dictaphone and the laptop are essential for my New Master Plan. There’s a part of me that thinks that knowing your opinion on 101 is also important (and maybe I’ll find out in 2009), but that’s probably also the part that listens to Lukas singing “you make my head spoon” and enjoys it – ie the twelve year old inside of me. And yes, maybe I should let her free, but if it’s good enough for the Czechs then it’s good enough for me. Or was it the Austrians? I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore.

EDIT: Maree had a baby! A girl named Isla. Awwwwwwwww!p

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’re sitting in my favourite seat on the bus? Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

Or:

Oh, so you decided to stop reply to text messages because you’re seeing someone now, and you thought hey, passive rejection of someone who’s been passive-aggressively pursuing you is awesome? Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

Or:

You’ve got a new job which means there’ll be even fewer people to hang out with here? Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

Or:

My new boots are going to take a couple of weeks to come into stock? Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

Or:

It’s been three weeks now and what, I don’t deserve it? I know you got my last email, I typed the address on it perfect. Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

Or:

You drank my gingerbeer? Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

In the last case, I should take it back, because I later found my gingerbeer further back in the fridge. And of course, the awesome almighty power of the phrase, much like that of the panda dance, should only be used for good, not evil, and it mustn’t be abused.

Discoveries of the past week have included that fact that gravy on fries is super super tasty after all, and that Tiffany was Canadian. Apparently. We played Headbands at Canadia, and I was like “Okay, so I’m Canadian, I’m not a musician, I’m not an actor, I’m not a politician, I’m not a sportsperson and I’m not really a comedian, what the hell am I famous for then?” and then I laughed and realised who I was and laughed heartily. We didn’t watch a movie because the store didn’t have Southpark. Instead we just ate pancakes that took me an hour and a half to make because it was a quadruple batch, and a quadruple batch of chocolate mousse, and poutine(ish). Mmm poutineish. I have to say though, that I am still constantly surprised and disappointed by people who don’t tell me that they’re not coming. I mean, it takes 30 seconds to send a text message, and it’s free, so I don’t get what their excuse could be. Unless it’s me sending back nasty replies, but I don’t do that. Much.

The Phoenix Foundation were awesome later that night, but my belly was so full of Canada still that I couldn’t dance to the Mysterious Tapeman, and then my feet were screaming in agony leftover from the pancake-making, and I just wanted the gig to end. Luke Buda at Caberet on Sunday night was lovely and sitting down though, along with a $45 banquet from Chow. I took Mummy and Daddy along, as well as Lisa of course, and they enjoyed themselves thoroughly, which is grand.

What are my other things that I’ve been up to this week? I cried and cried and cried watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition because it was a really political episode (yeah I know, random huh?) so along with the usual chick crack thing, I was crying for soldiers who aren’t Jessica Lynch and who therefore don’t get all the attention and cash-in, and I was crying about social injustice and I was crying cos the kid was so very fat,and how the hell does a kid get to be that fat? I mean, I was overweight, but I ate nutritiously at least. It wasn’t until we moved to Japan that I really porked up, and that was me making my own choices (“hey, at least food will be my friend…”). That kid was like six. Oh well. I prefer my chick crack to be much simpler and less of the making me think variety please.

Haha, did I really just write a paragraph about Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that didn’t also include the sentence “I’m due for my period soon so…”? I guess I did. Who knows where my period has gone. I’m pretty sure I’ll be giving birth to the anti-Christ any day now. That might explain why I’ve spent so much time on Myspace recently, including starting a group for the Country Club which you should totally join.

Right now I am full of lunchtime yum char with workmates, which was surprisingly more yum than I had been expecting, and full of plans to move tonight’s drinks from Ponderosa to Red Square, using the excuse of the weather but primarily because I always have a bad night if I go to Ponderosa, so frankly it can suck a fuck. And that brings us around in a nice circle, so I might sign off from this entry.

Friday

Saturday

I think I have successfully defended this city’s intellectual reputation. Hell yeah.

Do you know what else I should have done to defend this city? Punched Kerry Prendegast on Friday night. But I didn’t. That fucking bitch was sitting at OUR table at Boulot, by which I of course don’t mean with us, but rather in the spot in which we’d usually sit. Who the hell does she think she is?

Then the hot owner stalked me and Lisa down to Bodega where we were stalking her workmates and their bandmates having left my workmates who were all “oh early night”. I asked for a Main Divide Cabernet Merlot and the bartender searched the fridge for it, so therefore I don’t feel bad about making them stay open cos we sat around until way late. Then Lisa made me popcorn and showed me America’s Next Top Model because she’s awesome like that. And then I stayed up til 5am watching Freaks and Geeks and being a spazz.

Saturday morning I spent texting people to invite them to China @ The Country Club, and adding in grilled eggplant to frozen lasange and extra mozarella. Yuuuuuuuuum. Yay for frozen home-cooked goodness, and a double yay for the fact that I now have a full length freezer so that I might actually be able to fit in a loaf of bread even if the boys have been shopping. I didn’t think I’d go out that night, but then Kartini texted me to say that she was going to Atomic, so I had my arm twisted. The bus was late and full of drunken kids, and it was raining, and we had to walk a long way from Katy’s to Helen’s and my belly was full of pina colada, and oh the pain, but the conversation was great. Katy and Helen are both in Real Hot Bitches, so they busted out a couple of routines to ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ and umm oh I can’t remember now, and it was fantastic. I wish I could learn dance moves more easily than I do.

Atomic was sort of lame. It was full of dicks and ex arch nemisisisis, and I just wasn’t feeling it. I don’t think I’ll bother going again. It’s always the same songs, and the same tricks, and the same song orders, but it was nice to be with the KKK. Lynchings are always fun. My feet hurt today mostly from dancing at Helen’s, but I still mananged to do the big weekly clean and laundry and all. I’m such a homebody. And my head is like clicking into two points of view every half hour, it’s ridiculous. But kind of amusing. I don’t need to go into it any further. And to further add to the mix is the email that I received on Friday that made me run to the bathroom to bang my fists on the wall and howl very quietly. Oh the drama that I make for myself.

Man I’m looking forward to the short week. China is at 5pm on Friday cos Katy’s having a cocktail party that night. I look forward to seeing you there okay? Oh and anyone got any tips for excellent Chinese movies? It doesn’t have to be porny, but it could be, that’d be fine…

Hi Danielle,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you get out of it?

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

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

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

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

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

What made you start?

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

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

What made you carry on?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you write about?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have you made new friends from it?

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

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

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

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

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

Do you expect your family/friends to read it?

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

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

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

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

Do you read other online journals or blogs?

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

Do you have a favourite? WHy?

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

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

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

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

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

How many times a week do you write in?

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

For how long?

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

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

Yeah it does. But that’s okay.

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

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

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

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

What do they think of your new hobby?

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

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

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

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

Jo

So my favourite new game to play on Sundays is to find a friend whom you know was more than a little drunk at a big social function and text them to say that there’s a photo of them snogging on the back on the Sunday Star Times. Muhahaha. Sorry.

This morning I had brunch with KateH at BoxHouse. It was choice! We gossiped lots, as per usual, and I replayed for her all the conversations that we’d had on Friday Night that she didn’t remember. The service was lovely and the food was excellent, and so it made for a very enjoyable time all around. But eventually I had to drag myself home. Haley came over in the afternoon, and we actually got a lot of work done – well, we drafted our first press release, and tried to organise other things, and freaked out about how much work we have to do. I’m so craving a time machine that can zap us to the afternoon of November 21st when I have finished my exams and we have handed in our final report and all we have to do is worry about how to wear our hair to the actual show. Not that I’m shallow or anything, oh no.

But of course, no time spent working on our assignment is without at least twice the amount of time gossiping. Haley’s like “Wow, I learn something new about you every Sunday”. Today was intimate details of my sex life, poor girl, oh, and also that I have a website. Hi Haley! Now get back to work.

This evening I did nothing at all. Oh, that’s not strictly true – I talked to KateM on the phone which was super choice cos I hadn’t talked to her in a zillion years. She says the reason that people love me is for my paranoia. I think she’s been smoking crack overseas. Then I watched Buffy and then The A’Team. And now I’ve done the reporting in to our mentor/client, like the good girl I am, and am trying to arrange my day for tomorrow. I can’t remember if I have one interview or two tomorrow. Uh oh. I think it’s just one, and then I have two on Tuesday – hopefully. I guess right now I really should try and plan out some interviewing questions. Dammit, I’m supposed to be in PR, not Journalism! Oh wait, that’s right – us PR people fulfill ALL the media functions while you others are just lazy. Call us the dark arts, will you?

Also tomorrow, I must send out zines. Have I plugged that enough? When you write to me to ask me for one, if you’re especially polite, I may even send out one of my last remaining copies of The Garland Gang cd. I wonder if I still have a page about that. Hmmm, apparently I don’t. Oh well.

And I’ve been stupid, and have been reading your old letters, and I wonder if you’re still out there watching, or what. And did I do something wrong, and is that MY editor’s tread I hear approaching? And just finally, no one calls me verbacious any more. And that sucks.

I did write up how I’m going to Welly, yeah? Yeah I think I did. Which means I’ll have to rearrange my work days to fit that in, and coupled with the fact that I’m interviewing fashion students left right and centre, I’m pretty fucking busy eh. Also tomorrow I must go to the chemist in Mt Eden and plead with them to fill my pill repeat for me even though it was supposed to have expired on the 7th of September – I so don’t wanna have to pay $20 for another prescription. I’m not entirely sure how beneficial it’s been to me – I still have pimples, and I’m still hairy, but maybe less so. And who knows what’s going on in my ovaries. Oh, that
reminds me of amusing critics:

landscribe says: uhm.. i have issues with how your expenditure and income match up.. you eat out lots
Joanna McLeod says: well
Joanna McLeod says: I have an allowance
landscribe says: and you live in auckland.
Joanna McLeod says: plus I work 15 hours a week
Joanna McLeod says: plus I’m good at eating cheaply
Joanna McLeod says: you too can have a lifestyle like me!
landscribe says: i dont have ovary and pill issues.. nor do i like dry martinis… i can only *aspire*

Oh you get my point. Shut up.

1. So it has occured to me as I sit here starting to write that if I was to stop writing here then you would have to write to me to find out what’s going on in my life.

2. I was unable to find ANYONE to go out drinkign with tonight, and this is even after I told everyone that I had a $20 tab that i needed to spend TONIGHT. I wonder if it’ll still be valid tomorrow. I am prepared to cry at teh bartender if need be.

3. The problem with complaining to people that other people have been calling you a Crackwhore means that the people you’re complaining to will probably start doing it as well, especially if you’re both tired of working on your goddam PR report and the coffee you have fetched seems to just be making your mind not work at all. Oh my god I have so much work to do.

4. I got up early today so I could go shopping. I bought ten metres of crossover ethernet cable and then built us a network this afternoon (or rather, I connected the computers that T had put thingies on the other day – but I did have to turn ‘sharing’ on and stuff, so really, I am still Geek Chic), I got a denim skirt for me (cos the zipper on the one that I made from old jeans keeps coming down, plus this one is more respectable looking anyways, especially since it’s dark denim and semi matches my lovely jacket) and some Winnie-The-Pooh pajamas which I then promptly posted off to Karen. It’s her birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday Karen!

5. Since no one would come out drinking with me, I have instead mastered the art of spotting by myself. And if Clay throws out my knives again, there will be hell to pay!

Last night I was reading The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami in bed. Have you read it? I’m not sure if it’s out yet – I have a publisher’s copy of it from my book pimp Karen. Well, it’s short stories, and it seemed like every single story made me want to write a response to it, each story related to something I’ve had or experienced or felt. And I didn’t write any of it down, because i figured if I started doing that then I’d never sleep, but I have to put at least one down, and it’s about ‘The Kangaroo Communique’. A department store worker writes a letter to a customer he’s never met because of her complaint letter, and he tells her all these really random things and makes her an audio tape of him saying even more random things, and it totally made me think of you and your twenty three page letter that you sent me. He was crazy, and you were dorky and self concious, but I’m really glad that you did act “so out of character that the audience would be booing if this was a film because it wasn’t realistic” to paraphrase you badly. And yeah, that was it, basically.

Today I meant to get up at a decent hour, but I was dreaming that I was posessed and it was rather traumatic and I hope it wasn’t supposed to be my religious ephiphamy, because I can’t even spell the world, let alone believe in it. Also, I could see my breath from above the duvet, and I have lime green sheets and a pink duvet cover, so I was in no hurry to get out of bed. But eventually I did make it up, and I was domesticated and cleaned the kitchen. And then later KateH on MSN told me to go and meet her for coffee, so I unloaded the freezer and unplugged it and left it wide open to defrost, and went ot Parnell to meet her. We sat in the courtyard of Strawberry Alarm Clock and she ate my mushrooms on toast cos if you give her an inch she takes a mile, and discussed friends of hers that this audience hasn’t heard about and decided we should go and beat them up. And we made tentative plans to go to Fu on Friday, which’ll be kickass. Also on Friday night, I’m picking Bopha up at the airport, so YAY, i will have my darling flatmate back. I’m grumpy at Clay tonight cos he didn’t say anything about the amazing transformation of our freezer from a tiny icey hole into the ice free environment that it is now. I even scraped the ice off all the containers in there with food he’s cooked and squirreled away like a rodent so that you can tell what they are. He has NEVER cleaned out the freezer. Grrr. If he doesn’t clean the fridge sometime real soon, I will spit tacks. Either that or just sulk at him all the time. That’s always real effective. Not.

My books have gone slightly mouldy from being stacked in my wardrobe, lovely. I might go and alphabetise them right now cos there’s no one to talk to online. I want to go out! Tomorrow is my last ever day of holidays, really, since in Septmeber I will probably be working full time cos Bridget is going away for a conference for three weeks and Teri will be leaving soon after. Shit, last ever day of holidays – maybe I should get up at 9am and then get drunk all day long, by myself, like the misery guts that i am. That sounds like a solid idea. Either that, or I could stay in bed.

I got to use my first green sticker in my Vinne’s Know Your Flow Journal today. Exciting! I want to buy a stereo and so I’m tossing up between that or new glasses. The glasses are probably more important, right? Of course, both are dependant on me finding the cheque from Oma. I wonder if it would be wrong to write her an email saying that I need to go to San Francisco. Yeah, it probably would, eh?

Ooh kickass, I found the cheque buried in my wardrobe. Excellent. She wrote on the envelope “always be loved” and that’s just so lovely, it’d be worth so much more than the cheque to know that I would always be loved.

Arrrgh, so much stuff in my closet that needs to be cleaned of mould. My boots are all spotty – luckily it wipes off. And so many lists of memories, and also, the original Safekeeping letter, and that’s weird. But! I found two of my favourite necklaces, and some lipgloss. Kickass.

Add to that my pipes, a tiara, a copy of 6000 word version of ‘Intimacy’ that I thought I’d lost (you can read the 3000 word version in four parts on Swinney if you haven’t already (and you’re into extended short semi-fictional stories’o angst). I discovered a huge big box’o mixed stuff, so I’m retrieving stuff I want from it, throwing some things out and putting everything that I can’t be bothered dealing with for now back in it. Is it normal to get enthusiastic about cleaning your room only at 1am?

Hmmm, i just read through the 6000 word version and I’m not sure if I like it better or worse. It’s funny in reflection, cos when I wrote it at the start’o 2001, I got accused of just wanking on paper but then there’s things that have happened since then that reminded me at the time of the story, and it’s like I was writing my own foreshadowing – or my own wishlist, or whatever. Okay, I’m rambling. I’m going to install Wolfenstien 3D now cos i found the disk for it, even though I should go to bed with Murakami again. Night!

Today is my birthday, my 22nd to be exact. Any and all of you who haven’t seen me, called, txted or email suck. That’s right, ALL of you. So there.

Work was long but hey, I was weraing my pretty new skirt so at least I looked good.

Evening was Bopha and Berrin which apparently means Little Bear so I love him yelling “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” and breaking like mad as soon as I walked in the door which was a little scary.

Evening was dinner on the pillows at Caravan Serai with Bopha and Jezza and Renee and Maree and KateH and James and KateM and Jody, and oh my god that was so cool apart from getting locked in a toilet stall and having to take the lock off with a knife as an alternative to climbing over the roof into the dust and air vents to get out, but maybe we’ll write about that when we’re soberer, cos I’m actually reaaaaaaally sleep so I migth go sleep and write up an inventory tomorrow. I had a kickass birthday, and it would only have been cooler if You had called. Ha, who’s that You? You all are, maybe. Also, I’m worried that you’re not going to email me again, after my last letter to you which I guess was a suggestion that you shouldn’t, but that’s not really what I want, it’s just what is obviously for the best. But fuck the best! I want the rest! Anji says I should go and leave the boy another note with my number and see if he wants to have coffee, but I’m so not even sure that I wanna see him, I think I just want SOMEONE to fancy. Meh. Think about it tomorrow? For now bed looks all warm and soft and stuff. ANd there’s no one left to drink with cos everyone’s gone to bed and I almost fell asleep in Bopha’s when I wenmt to wake her up for the soccer which she’s not even going to watch (I’m in shock). Yeah, so I’m cold and drunk and mostly really happy, bed would be good here.

Hey, do you think I’m grown up now? We’ll see. xojo.

PS – Did I mention that I set myself on fire yesterday? Whoops!

Bed gets harder and harder to get out of in the mornings as it gets colder and colder. Bopa and I had breakfast in Grafton together, excellently cheap donuts and Atomic coffee before I went to work, a little bit late, but the big boy Bridget wasn’t there anyways, so it didn’t matter. Hmm, I just typed ‘boy’ but I meant boss. I’m a dick. Also, do you know who else is a dick? HORRIBLE MOOCHER GIRL. Grrr. I’m getting veeeeeeeeeery annoyed with our houseguest. Last night I missed a top secret but very important meeting because she had gone out and parked me in, and then I thought she’d come back any minute now, but of course she didn’t. I really need to say something to Bopha about it, but the thing is Clay wants her gone just as much as me, and I really don’t see why I should always have to be the fucking bad guy. Clay should get a fucking spine. Hmm, I was actually in a really good mood until just now too. But maaaaaargh – I mean, it’s fair enough to be pissed off after someone’s been in your house for four weeks without any indication of when they’re going to leave, right? I mean, this is a pretty small apartment.

But anyways, brighter happier notes. Trying to get gossip out of Justin about yourself is like trying to squeeze juice from a nonjuiceable thing, which is funny given how much he’ll tell you about everyone else not pertaining to you. I have things on my mind, semi guilty conscience and stuff, but not really – I feel bad for not being as sweet to someone as he was to me, but according to Justin, it’s all cool, so that’s cool, and yeah, end of story.

My wrists have been really really really clicky lately. I’m sure I heard Natural Ange recommend something for that – Silica maybe? or Zinc? I dunno, but that’s what I should be taking. Also, less wanking would probably help too. And plenty of other things. I should try and find the other poi that Jacinta made me, but I fear it has gone the way of my sneakers and vanished into thin air somewhere in limbo between Auckland and Wellington. Hmm, i keep going to hit tilda funny key cos I use a mac at work, but that doesn’t work here. Anyways. Okay, it’s becoming pretty obvious that i don’t have much to say, so I should talk about my birthday instead.

Hi, I’m turning 22 on the 17th of June. You can find my birthday wishlist here. You should send me stuff – if you email me I will give you my address; who knows, it could be the start of a beautiful friendship (I can give you references on that one). I’m going out for dinner to somewhere cheap and BYO for dinner on my actual birthday – and the best bit is that since Clay will be away then, I don’t have to invite Kara – muhahahah, so it’s just going to be my closest nearest and dearest, cos massive dinner parties are a little scary, and then having a (not hyped) party on the 29th, after exams, to which you’re all invited, assuming that either A) I know you, or B) you know my address and aren’t intimidated by my friends. Cool. My friends aren’t really that scary, even if they are a little protective. Maree came around this evening, and it was lovely to see her, even though she didn’t share her meat (I’ve eaten too much bread today and I’m craving proteins. This could also be related to me being midcycle, I think (and a quick check of the old pillarooni packet confirms it (I hope my previously good blood pressure hasn’t gone up drastically over hte past couple’o weeks))).

You know, if that last sentence had been a maths equation, it would have been fucking hard. Oh and one other thing – I fixed the links on all the pages to my photo directory – it should have always been /cam not /photos.

When did I last write? Probably a while ago. Ahh, Wednesday, when I was sick and dying. Right. Well, Thursday I got up and cleaned the kitchen with Clay – we scrubbed inside cupboards and everything. Ben started moving out around 6pm, which was also when Bopa started moving in, so I found that kind of amusing. When Ben left finally I wished him good luck. Apparently he’s going back to Thames and he’s going to become a fisherman. It seems that the big city has broken his spirit. I’d feel a little guilty for that except that i told him he owed me $175 and he only gave me $80.

We had some bubbles to celebrate Bopa moving in, and chatted to her friend Rabbi who was very nice. She went out to some gig, Clay went to hockey, and KateM picked me up and we went down to The Classic to meet up with KateH and see EyeTV’s last ever gig. After watching Sammy doing his MC intro, Katem and I realised that we hadn’t had dinner, so we went down to the Tanuki’s cave for yakitori. When we got back to The Classic, Soda were still playing. They were okay; nothing exciting. I was amazed at how empty the place was, and that it continued to get emptier and emptier, just because it was after 11pm by the time that EyeTV started playing. But they were so good! I love the singer. Of course, you may very well have noticed that i have an obsession with the singers of Kiwi bands, which works out well with KateH fancying drummers. Then again, I have started to notice the finger-work of bassists more and more, but that might just be my dirty mind. Anyways, they played Basement Static so I was stoked, and of course they played their other hits (if I was to reference you, ‘Just the Way it is’ would cut out in the middle), and we boogied lots and lots up the back. As a followup, Luke Casey noticed us dancing, and I’m sure he was impressed, so that’s cool. I couldn’t figure out why I was so comfortable with Sammy, since i’ve only met him a couple’o times whilst working for KateM and I realised that he reminded me completly of someone, but it took me until today to work out that he looks just like Olivia’s Steve. I was still very sick, and when the discoball started spinning, I was spinning too, doped up on night&day, and brufen and champange and passion cosmos. Kate was like “are you okay?” and I was like “I pay hundreds of dollars to feel like this sometimes!” which was of course an exaggeration, but still, the swimming feeling was kinda fun.

On Friday I met with my tutor in Persuasive Communication to discuss my forthcoming seminar, and she gave me some starting points – cognitive dissonance and social judgement theory if you wanna send me some papers on those topics. She also reminded me that attendance at all classes is compulsory, and then gave me back my mark for my first speech. I got 14/20 on it, and I’m wellstoked, because I also got a whole bunch of constructive comments and yeah, I kinda wanted to pin my mark to our fridge.

After that, I ran a bunch of errands and got my hair cut. Mmmmmmm scalp massage. Note to anyone who ever wants to watch me purr – play with my hair and rub my head. Thank you. After that I went up to the Office and did a whole bunch’o research using proquest; AUT’s library has gone all hightech and e-resourced since I left. And then I went to Mezze to have lunch with Dee and Shirley and Maz. Two PR girls & one in training vs one unemployed journalist; if we’d gone with our stereotypes (Dee walked in talking on her phone) it could have been very amusing. But we didn’t. So yeah, it was nice to catch up. I haven’t seen Dee since I went to see all her wedding photos, so I really should stay in touch better. She didn’t ask about the microbiologist friend’o her husband’s, and that is probably a good thing.

After lunch I was still feeling weak and tired and sick , and I got home to find a note from Bopa saying she was gonan be away for the weekend, so I decided to rent some videos. I joined the Source and got 10 for $10, even. So I watched ‘Occasional Course Language’ (shit) and later ‘Angst’, which I really liked. That’s about it, I think. Yeah, sleepysick, duvet on couch.

This evening (today being Saturday of course), Clay and I were watching ‘The Sting’ (which is excellent) when his friend Brad-friend-of-boatshoeguy showed up on our doorstep. He was just bored, so he stayed and watched the rest of the movie, and then when Clay went to bed (giving me a pointed look on his way out that suggested that I was not to seduce Brad or I’d be in trouble) he stayed and watched ‘Nightwatch’ with me as well. Exciting. Actually, it was just nice to have company; Clay’s always out, I’m not even entirely convinced that Bopa lives here yet and I’ve been too sick to pursue my friends very much and too sick to really go out (i probably shouldn’t have gone to EyeTV, but LAST GIG EVER waaaah, I was almost teary at the end). Now I’m wearing too much red lipstick and pouting in anticipation of the gangster-poker dressup night we’re planning. But I really should go to bed; after all, I’ve been ever so active today.

Today I got up around half past eight to finish off my assignment. I’m not really sure what exactly I wrote, only that I was dying while I was doing it, and then I went into my 10am class to give some stuff to Jinan for it. But I was just about to throw up/pass out/something else bad, so I had to walk out midclass to go home. I managed to sleep for a couple more hours after that, until Ben got up and played Linkin Park so loud that all the windows in the apartment were rattling. Thank FUCK he’s gone tomorrow. Bopa’s having her bed delivered at 9.30am, although I’m guessing he won’t be out quite by then. The house is a pigstye but I can’t really clean cos when I stand up I feel faint. I’m chewing airwaves gum like it’s going out of style, popping brufen cos my wrists are hurting from essay writing, and wondering if I can doubledose on my day/night tablets. I hate being sick! Especially when there’s no one to take care of me. I wish someone would bring me lemsips and soup and stroke my forehead – am I asking too much? Clay just got home from work now (11pm) but when I told him I was sick, he hugged me holding me at arm’s length. He’s mean.

What else? Sick sick sick sick sick. I miss Tom who I haven’t talk to in weeks like mad. I miss KatieB. I was getting random text messages yesterday from someone calling me “Spunkrat” and “Babycakes” and I had no idea who they were from until they demanded gossip and used name-abbreviations so I figured out it was Andee, and so that was cool, but still, I miss my friends! Oh sure, I spent an hour at KateM’s last night drinking red wine with her after I dropped off her work keys, and I saw KateH every day in the weekend, but is that really enough? No, I don’t think so! Not when I need nursing it’s not.

Bopa was gonna call the Welly Massive to see if they were coming up this weekend, so I dunno if they are or not. I hope I’m better tomorrow, although if I’m playing Welly games, I will probably just end up semidying again. It’s hard to keep up with some people’s lifestyles!

I was in the high demand section of the AUT library (oh yeah, there’s a huge demand for me, baby) yesterday when my landlady rang to tell em she was shocked at how often our rent autopayments had failed. I tried to explain to her that I’d already told her that, and that it was Ben’s fault and why we were kicking him out, but I got all worried and told her that I’d have to call her back when I got home with dates from when I’d put money through manually. I was completely freaked out and stressed, because I know that I’ve always paid the rent, although admittedly sometimes it’s been nearly two weeks late, plus I hate anything to do with banks. I was just about in tears stressing about it when she left a message on my cellphone saying that she’d noticed that there were lots of anonymous deposits going in and that she figured that was probably me, she was sure I was reliable and not to panic. PHEW!

Tomorrow night Pluto are playing at Leftfield and EyeTV are playing at The Classic, so it would be a dilemna except that there’s no way in hell I would go to Leftfield. The last time I saw EyeTV play was at the Static launch party nearly two years ago when Clay and I won the dance contest, and they were excellent, so I may go to see them. Then again, it’s Bopa’s first night in the flat and all, so I’ll probably just stay home; that works for me too, especially if I’m still sick, which I will no doubt be.

IGSTJKD was on Monday, without ceremony. Yesterday was textfiles inside the covers of cds that people make for me. Today is Wednesday. Tomorrow is Anzac Day. In the lounge right now, Clay is being all chatty with Ben, which makes me laugh cos I think that’s really hypocritical considering how much he goes on about Ben behind his back. At least I’m just flat out grumpy with him all the time since we decided we didn’t like him. This is honour and intergrity, really! And it is also zfree not connecting, despite being on its 83rd dialling attempt.