Hubris.co.nz

I’ve moved back to Ngaio and I’ve started reading books again.

I read more than half of Cleaving in one sitting. I thought I had identified with Julie Powell before in Julie & Julia as she worked a boring job, made friends on the internet, watched a lot of Buffy and got drunk frequently. But in Cleaving as she pines for her lover or ex lover, whatever state their relationship was in at the time, as she talks about the sex that they had which was unlike any she’d ever had before, as she sought out anonymous terrible fucking that she told her lover about afterwards in an attempt to make him jealous  – well, I lived all that too.

I worry too that I will never have another lover who will make me lose all control the way that you did, that I will never spend weeks at a time in a permanent state of arousal, driven into a fever by your emails and text messages and story telling. I worry that no one will ever put their hand on my leg while I am driving the way that you did, which almost made me crash my car. I’m afraid no one will ever lock me to them with their kiss. And while there are other people now who can make me come, multiple times, and maybe they fuck me harder than you ever did, it’s not the same. And yes, then I remember that there used to be Thomas, and that I used to think I would never love anyone like that, and now I am “who?” what?” about that. So one day, you will be gone from my mind but for now, there is just passive-aggression, and emptiness, and because this is Wellington I see you everywhere, but we don’t talk and I miss you.

There have been parties. There was my birthday Triple X party, in which a rollickingly good time was had by all. Heather came down from Auckland for it, and we spent lots of time together hanging out and watching Veronica Mars. She took the rest of the DVDs up to Auckland with her and has been making me giggle with her “OMG!” text messages as various things happened throughout the series. But back to the party. I kissed a lot of pretty ladies, both in the kissing booth and out, which is always a pleasure, and never a chore. I went as a Doctor of Fuckology, and had a clipboard full of hypothesis. Here are some more photos.

Many of the things that I expected to happen did

Sisters dressed up to party

I also volunteered again at Full Code Press, but I will probably write about that on joannamcleod.com instead of here.

On Saturday night I went to a B party at Anna Jane’s house. I was dressed as Beth Ditto, and while not that many people got that, they did get lectures about Health At Every Size and other fat activism.

Karen as Barbarella, me as Beth Ditto

The girl that I kissed at the Wellingtonista Awards was there, and we hung out and I told her that I had stopped talking to her because I don’t want to be her friend, I want to be her lover, and it was too frustrating to follow her tweets about wanting to get laid when I was waiting right there to do the job for her. I ended up feeling more than a little like a date rapist because after we kissed, I wanted to kiss again, and she said no, but I heard that as “maybe”. Frustration. I should know better. It was nice though, that she said she heard I was amazing in bed (I am!) although I wonder who said that to her, because our Eskimo bond constantly tells me I was a terrible lay.

I haven’t talked about moving, because it was horrible and culminated in me cleaning until almost 11pm last Sunday night, then getting 100 metres down the road in my car with Seb in a cage and discovering that I had a flat tyre. My father had to come down from Ngaio to help me, which is lucky because as it happened, my jack was missing the turning bit anyway. But now anyway I am safely back in the parental bosom and took them and BAMJI out to lunch at Osteria Del Toro to thank them for all their hard work. Seb has settled in wonderfully, and I have put my DVDs into order of colours, but all the blackness of my sizeable Whedon collection throws things off somewhat. I spend my time at home watching many episodes of The West Wing, and teaching my dad how to play Wii. In the mornings we take the train together and I get coffee at Sweet Fanny-Anne’s. Work is work. Getting paid is nice.

The Pretty Pretty Pretty party was awesome. I do need to figure out a better way to manage clothing swaps in the future though so that everyone has a fair chance to get good things. I met some lovely lovely girls though as the house was crowded with new people. Shout outs to my homies!

The day we got our official letters at work about how we’re losing our jobs, we were given a speech that tried to compare it to Napolean’s retreat from Moscow, like that was a good thing, because hey, 22,000 people survived that. 380,000 people died, but…

I dropped a frying pan on my toe before. It’s really sore. I’m hiding out in bed, consequently.

Kat & Kane are coming down next week, hurrah! Heather came down the other weekend and it was fabulous.

It keeps me a little bit entertained watching my automatic knee-jerk reactions in which I actively seek out validation from a number of sources if I’m feeling let down or neglected by one. There has been a lot of feeling like I don’t get any attention lately. That’s a consequence of no longer sleeping with someone of course, but it’s taking a long time to get over. Mostly I miss the friendship though.

I tried out for Full Code Press but didn’t make the team. I was a sad panda but the divine Tash suggested that I come along as a volunteer instead, so I’m going to Sydney on May 11-14.

I had other things to say, but I can’t remember what they were. I say a lot of things on Twitter these days. I also don’t say a lot of things. Oh you know what I mean.

My dreams are still far too vivid and encapturing. I feel like I’m smoking opium or something, or at least what I imagine it might be like.

I’m trying to do a good deed a day but in typing that out I realise that I haven’t done any good deeds today.

And finally, after years of looking, I bought some new sunglasses yesterday. This means my old ones which I bought on May 1, 1999, can be retired after almost ten years of hard work. I don’t want to say goodbye, but they’re so scratched and beaten up that it really is time. So here, let me present a digital tribute of my old sunglasses all around the world from as long as I’ve had a flickr account:

In Fiji in 2005

At Hyperion Wines in Matakana when we went up for the BDO in 2008

In Samoa in 2008

Reflected in Canberra in 2008

Outside the Tiki Shack in 2008

And I spent aaaaaaaages looking for older photos, but couldn’t find any of my sunglasses, but I did reupload all these terrible quality images from my old journal for your pleasure.

The idea that I will push you away from me long before you will even have a chance to start to dislike and then reject me is not a new one. I remember way back in the olden days, like ‘02/03, talking to (Good)*Tom who assured me that there was nothing I could ever do that would ever make him move away from me. I asked if sleeping with his brother would do the trick, and he said it wouldn’t. Maybe I should have said his sister. Hi Mary. Heh.

Anyways, my narrative thread, my reason for getting out of my nice warm bed to go and find my computer (my new eeePC, so so so cute) wasn’t to talk about Tom at all. I think my thread was supposed to start with how I was texting Tingle “If you want to make your life less complicated, stop replying to drunkass random dumbasses who aren’t your girlfriend” and perhaps try to explain about how we (you and I, my dear reader) got to this stage in my storytelling, but I’m not entirely convinced that it will work out that way. So perhaps I could make a bulleted list of what’s what?

* There is Good Tom because his last name starts with a G, and Bad Tom whose name starts with a B, but as to whether or not their names are deserved, I am constantly divided.

Do you notice the time, like, all the time? Because it was 11.11pm when I started this post, but then I had to reply to twitters, read an article on cock that Harvest Bird sent me to cheer me up (I think), and then fast-forward the ads of today’s episode of The Simpsons, and now it’s eight minutes later. Does that sound like a lot to pack in in seven minutes? Because I think I’ve mentioned before that my brain is working overtime these days, and how sometimes I think that I’m on speed instead of citalapram.

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.

So. Again. The reoccurrence. I am so very tired of this. I am so very tired. I don’t sleep at night, so I can’t get up in the morning, and even if I was sleeping I would still want to sleep all day because bed is safe and warm and if I am asleep then I can forget about all the things that I should be doing (except that instead, I dream about them).

These are the things on my mind right now:

• Getting together the rest of the swag that I’m responsible for and then putting together the swag-bags for the GirlGeek Dinners tomorrow night.
• Speaking about my career at the dinner tomorrow night. You know, that career.
• Much much much paperwork at work that I have not done because I’ve been worrying more about the Big Picture
• The small remaining details of the Big Picture at work which seem to have no end.
• My assessment at work tomorrow. The predicted verdict: it would probably be helpful if I was at work more often. And more paperwork needs to get done. Which is where the ability to get out of bed would be nice.
• All the things that I should be doing to enable me to get out of bed a little easier, but because I’m not doing them I don’t feel like I’m entitled to go and talk to a counsellor about it, and so it goes.
• The creative projects that I have bubbling over in my head right now. I need my next paycheque so I can proceed with these. Or at least with the domain names
• The neglecting of all my current projects in favour of staying in bed/lying on the couch staring at the TV
• Social things coming up like KateH and Heather coming down, and the Wairarapa Harvest Festival, all of which I am looking forward to, but which will require me to be peppy and functional.
• Ideas kicking around in my head for a sorely-needed work function to build inter-team bonds
• The many many bills that I need to pay.
• The many errands that need to be run – getting a new prescription, taking the microwave in for fixing, getting my warrant. I need a PA to coordinate this kind of shit. Essentially, I’m just so fucking tired of having to take responsibility for my own life. Not in like, a mortal way. I just wish that someone would make me up in the morning, and give me a coffee, tell me what I was going to wear that day, and drive me to work. Then they could pick me up via the supermarket where we’d buy vegetables that I’d eat, make sure Sebastian has flea treatments, and tell me when my schedule’s overlapping so that I don’t overbook myself. Even just a couple of days with someone working like that for me would be great. I don’t understand how it is that people manage to function all the time with looking after themselves. I would like to book myself a couple of nights at a house in the country, but I can’t take time of work until we’ve launched and that’s settled and oh, nuts, it’s just all errrrrrrgh.

But it’s funny though, if you talk to me, if you see me, I will be doing my very best to pretend that none of this is going on. Or I will pick one thing, and roll my eyes about it, and make some lame joke. Last week one of my friends I hadn’t seen in ages told me that she was making more of an effort to say no to people, so I decided for my homework I’d try to say no at least once over the past week. Instead I seem to have picked up more projects and things to do. Maybe I am on the wrong medication. Maybe I should go back on fluoxetine so I can think about nothing instead of thinking about everything. But I don’t think that’s a very good idea. I failed today at going for a swim (my body is aching from doing nothing because my mind is a cage that keeps me from dancing with the one I love functioning properly) and also at cleaning the bathroom and kitchen. But at least I have the Mighty Boosh on divx to watch. And Australia’s Next Top Model was on last night, exciting! Not to mention hundreds of episodes of The Simpsons which are very handy for sleeping through.

Auckland is always such a city of contrasts. I got to Wellington Airport with much time to spare, so I read the paper cover to cover, perching preacriously on a stupidly slippery stainless steel stool, after surrendering my armchair to an army of annoying angry women who surrounded me and chatted incessantly and loudly. Of course being there early meant my flight was late coming in, and so in a hurray I decided to take a shuttle to my hotel instead of the airport bus. $26 bought me a seat with nine others, a long trip through Grey Lynn past Heather’s house and Canton where I was due for dinner, and I was the last person to be dropped off. Dammit!

But there was no time to fume. The Quadrant’s lobby was stark white and filled with scented candles. I rolled my bag down the long white walkway through the bar area and into a lift that had an embedded TV screen playing Juice. My room was tiny but functional. I discovered to my perverse joy later that I could sit on the toilet, blowdry my hair, drink vodka and watch TV all at the same time. What more could anyone want? A quick shower later, I was in a corporate cab from the Hyatt next door on my way to Kingsland. The sun was setting and reflected in all the shiny new architecture along Symonds Street. It was a beautiful view, but holy fuck, $18 for that distance? That amount would have got me to Greenlane in the olden days!

I grabbed two bottles of wine from Weta Wines, pleased it was still there and still open, and headed to Canton. There were still people at the table I’d booked (bastards!) so I went and stood on the street outside. Bopha came up and left to get cash and wine. Amy & Ross came along and left to get wine. Then came Martina and Heather. Robyn and Heather’s b/f Ben eventually completed our party, since Clay and Nige flaked.

I had been salivating over the prospect of dinner at Canton since I booked my tickets up to Auckland, and while the large group and noise of the place made converastion difficult, the food didn’t disappoint. As usual, I was appointed/appointed myself chief orderer, so with some deference to Martina’s vegetarianism, we had: black bean hapuku, sweet & sour pork, sizzling venison with ginger & spring onions, crispy roast pork, special black chilli chicken, sizzling vegetables and egg noodles with fried veges. YUM! Two people took doggie bags home, and with tea and dim sum and rice and corkage, we each paid $19.25. So good!

Afterwards we were going to go to Ruby for more drinks, but it was too loud, and so we settled on the Kingslander for a couple more bottles of wine. There were television screens EVERYWHERE, it was most distracting. But good to be able to converse. I like my friends. I cabbed back to the hotel eventually, and debated ordering porn from the in-house video system, just because I could, but it was $17.95 per movie, so I settled for watching Wild On: Naked instead. Genius.

The next morning, I set my alarm for 10.30 so I could wake up to meet Heather who was coming to the hotel at 11. We discovered that breakfast stopped being served at 10am, so tragedy of tragedies, we had to go straight for bubbly and cheese. As we sat in the sunny courtyard and I started to burn, we heard someone playing an electric guitar, and the sound bounced off the building next door. Given that Heather’d spotted John Toogood and Phil Knight in the lobby, we were happy to think that it was Shihad playing in our hotel, but it sounded pretty terrible, so maybe it was Grinspoon instead, who were due to be opening for Muse that night.

Once the sun got to be a bit too much, we tried to pay our bill, which took forever (the staff were friendly but not highly competant), and we got changed and went into the spa. Hurray! Yeah, a spa on a hot day after drinking caffiene and alcohol might not be the smartest idea ever, but it was loooooooovely. And then it was quite obviously time for lunch, so we strolled down to the Art Gallery, hoping to have lunch there, but found it was shut. Luckily Rueben at the New Art Gallery was open, so we parked ourselves on one of the balconies there, I had an average lamb salad, Heather had amazing french toast, and we had a totally unnecessary but very happy bottle of Deutz as well. Mmmmmm indulgence! And then just to show that we’re not totally cultureless, we went around the art gallery too. Upstairs was an exhibition called Making Worlds, which was really bloody cool. They had a seven minute animation loop called “City Glow” going on in a darkened room, which I totally could have watched all day. Although it made me feel far too Jessica Simpsony lame and pointless when I saw it was produced by Takashi Murakami and I was like “He did those brightly coloured Louis Vittion prints!”. Like I need to know that.

Eventually Heather and I parted company, and I went back to the hotel for naps and snacks, before KateH came to pick me up in the evening. We went to her beautiful house which is down by the water, and had a few drinks while we waited for the Checks and Grinspoon to get off the stage. Drive-thru burgers from Wendy’s ensured that our timing was perfect to actually get a park by the Waitakere Stadium, and we’d only missed two of Muse’s songs. We’re both so old now that we didn’t mind that at all. When did I stop queuing for things hours before they began? Was it around the same time that my knees started to go? But anyways, the gig was AMAZING. So good. When they played ‘Hysteria’, I had an auralgasm of the kind I hadn’t experienced since Dimmer. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! Totally matched up to my dirty dream that featured it prominently in it. And we saw Amanda and Darren, which was nice, and left when they turned on the lights. And then we were naughty and had an after-hours spa back at the hotel, which was fantastic for sore feet and knees, especially since it was merely lukewarm. Best Friday EVER!

The next morning was Saturday, and I slept in, loving the bed, before I decided it was time to drag my ass out into the streets. I strolled down to Gloria to have breakfast, where my French toast wasn’t as good as Heather’s, but the coffees were nice and I read the paper cover to cover. Then I got on the link bus to go to the museum, but I started feeling all nostalgic and weird, because of all the memories of the route (which are detailed in ‘Link’ in 101 Stories that I want to tell you of course) and so I decided to just stay on the bus and go all the way around the city. Well, I got off briefly in Ponsonby to buy vodka and bread, but you know what I mean.

Finally it was time for me to meet Martina and David and also Karl at the Queen Street bus stop to go to the Lynfield YMCA for the wrestling. Oh yes. I went west, life is peaceful there. I went west, people had terrible hair. The ride on the 257 was pretty full of nostalgia too, given the two flats I lived in on/off Dominion Road. It was also interesting hearing other people’s stories, like where they lost their virginities. And drinking vodka from a ginger ale bottle made me feel like a fourteen year old again, and who doesn’t like that? We got to Lynfield with some time to spare, so we hunted out food for the boys, and I sang the YMCA song a lot with the actions, and we took this photo in front of the vets. And now I might just revert into a photo montage to sum up the awesomeness of the wrestling, and my brand new boyfriend with a spectacular ginger mullet.

After a cold long wait for the bus, we all started falling asleep on the back seat. Nevertheless, Martina and David came back to my hotel room for a while, and helped me polish off the remaining food and vodka, and I stayed up late watching E! again. Good times.

On Sunday I was expecting to have brunch with Bopha and Clayton, but she was stuck out west somewhere, and Clayton made other plans, so after checking out at 12 and leaving my suitcase with reception, I returned to Gloria to have a very very long breakfast by myself with the Sunday Star Times. Finally it was getting near time to find myself an airport bus, so I went to get my suitcase, and I asked them where the airport bus stop was, and they told me down on Symonds Street. So I rolled my case up to a stop in the hot hot sun, but couldn’t find any markings on it to indicate that the airport bus might stop there. I rang Maxx, and they gave me the number for the airport bus company, and I couldn’t find a human, but it did mention the route, listing the Hyatt which was right next to the Quadrant, so disgruntledly I rolled back up to the Hyatt, and the doorman told me the stop was right in front of the Quadrant. Cheers clever desk staff! So I was hot and stinky and smelly then, and worried that I might not make it to the airport in time, when a shuttle pulled up in front of me and told me he’d drive me to the airport for $15, the same as the bus, since he was going that way anyway. Yay! That shuttle totally redeemed the shuttle in. And so that was the end of my time in Auckland. Very good fun indeed.

Bullet point lists make the world go around, right?

• The everscrumptious Miss Heather has switched over my site design for me, so bear with me while the kinks are ironed out. My semi-secret RSS feed seems to have temporarily vanished, and of course Twitter is blocked at work, so I’m not sure if that’s feeding in properly, but now at least if you run my site through a validator (don’t!) you should only get four or so errors and not sixty like the old one. Goodbye to the hump though, sadly.
• If you receive a text message from me that sounds a little strange, it’s because I no longer have an ‘8′ key on my phone, so therefore I have no ‘t’, ‘u’ or ‘v’. It makes things like giving directions to Superfino read “On Ghznee s, opposie Bdg Cars, by Bicoria S”. That makes perfect sense, right? Also, do make your way to Superfino, please. We spent a very pleasant Friday night there. I recommend the Pear & Vanilla Punch especially, but not reaaaaally the Blood-Orange and Cinnamon Martini.
  

• We’ve taken to going to the Quiz at the Southern Cross on Tuesday nights. By “we” I mean sometimes some Wellingtonistas, and sometimes my sisters & Bambi. I am, just for a change, in love with the Quizmaster. You know how I fancy people who know more things about something than I do (music, depression, computers or – in the olden days – drugs), that rule of course applies to someone who has the answer sheet on quizes.
• Before you come up to the Cross for the quiz, I’d like to recommend Le Metropolitain for dinner, and I’d say that even if I hadn’t been called “Madame Jo” on the phone in a hot French accent that I discovered was attached to a hot French waiter. He brought me the wine list when I was waiting by myself instead of making me wait, and was efficient, friendly and good. Everyone’s favourite public servant blogger might not approve of their cassolet, but damn my cow face (read: beef cheeks) were tasty, and since Bambi ordered snails I got to try them for the first time. They tasted like mushrooms, while the mushrooms that they were served with tasted like garlic and cream.
  
• You might have gathered due to the increase in the number of photos that I’m displaying that I’ve taken to carrying my new camera with me everywhere. That’s because the batteries don’t fall out, and it’s got a 1 gig card in it. And I like taking photos, of course. I’ve started to take a series of portraits of people with ‘my eyes’:
  

  

  

• I’ve been watching Season One of Veronica Mars with my lovely new flatmate Kat. She guessed who the killer was correctly, which I didn’t manage to do the first time I watched it. She’s a smart one, that girl. I love watching shows with big reveals that I know are coming up with others, although her little shriek when the killer was in the back seat was nothing compared to Lisa on finding out who killed Laura Palmer. Kat’s fiance Kane is a pro-wrestler! How awesome is that? It means he has no fear of cavorting around in tights, which he demonstrated in his costume as a ballet dancer at Country Club: Back in the USSR on Saturday night.
• I haven’t downloaded my photos from Back in the USSR, but once I do, you’ll be able to see a steady progression from tipsy into disturbingly intoxicated, despite all the food – I made pierogi, and potatoes, and sausages, and Frances and Karen both brought blini, and there was caviar as well, and chips, and really disgusting solid rye bread, and kisial – which was of course vodka jelly, and Moscow Mules, and by the end of the night there was white rum as well. Some people had splendid costumes – Anji brought along a bear so I had to hump him. I also gave lap dance versions of the panda dance to the boys who were complaining about the poor service at Dream Girls that they’d got the night before. My heart bleeds for them. The party was lots and lots of fun, and I was stoked with the turn out. I gave someone a big long speech about how I am not what they need, and how they really shouldn’t fancy me. I thought it was a pretty convincing speech, and it was the right thing for me to do, so I was a little disturbed when I woke up next to the speech recipient. I would be later more disturbed to discover that somehow a glass of water had managed to get knocked into my underwear drawer, leaving me with moist panties everywhere. It was a much nicer discovery, when I finally got up at 6pm on Sunday though, to find that the whole house had been cleaned. WOO! And then last night over flat dinner I heard that people had been spraying my new Cinderella Coconut Bathroom Cleaner into their mouths as it is billed as being so very non toxic. Disturbing!

So this is the thing. It’s 11.37pm, on Tuesday August 7, 2007. I just got home from Wellingtonista Quiz League, on the last #2 bus, and while I listened to melancholy music the whole way home, that does not do enough to illustrate the terror I feel at holding an A5 envelope in my hand from Robyn. Yes, obviously, she has replied to my calls for someone to send me a copy of BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS which I wrote, since I’m going to be selling it at Craft 2.0 along with my mother’s pottery (check out the blog)- anyway. But that was so long ago. I finished it in 2002, anyways, so you have to hope that I’ve changed since then. I remember glancing through a copy in August when I had dinner at Annabel’s house but that wasn’t a full-on confrontation of the way you were five years ago. But I suppose now that there are Korn videos on the TV, and Sebastian curled up on my lap, I should confront it now.

Wow, so that wasn’t quite as bad as I expected. I suppose because I wrote it in 2002, things have changed so much since then. I mean. looking at who read Boys, Boys, Boys, Boys, Boys, in so-far as who was in it, *IV said it was the sexiest thing he’d ever read, although, you know, that was after we’d had sex another time. The ex boyfriend (you know, of all of those ex boyfriends that I’ve had) has read it, but didn’t comment, surprisingly enough, for all the speaking out that he ever did when we were together and afterwards.

I had other things to say. I had photos in my flickr account to link to. I would have talked about how my new home project was Lisa and I watching Firefly at home. I would have talked about a buttload of social events that I’ve been to with the Wellingtonista, partially revolving around the Wellingtonista Quiz League and partly with awesome fresh fish at the Port Cafe last Friday, and oh, you know what? Whatever. Maybe I’ll post tomorrow or maybe I won’t. But hurray for Robyn, and now things will be awesome. Oh, and hopefully there’ll be new Hubris as soon as Heather can do it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have you ever forgotten to put on underpants?

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

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

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

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

EDIT: Questions from the fiesty Miss Heather:

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

2. Desperate for a shag, or frigid?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

xojo

Oooh look at me, I’ve finally got my journal kind of current. Except for filling in my RAGE about Dana being eliminated instead of Jill. Or Zayra, naturally. But let’s not talk about that (or the boards that I have been reading, or the tears that have sprung to my eyes today watching clips of Marty and Jordis…). Let’s talk about me instead!

Firstly, what I left out of my Auckland recap was that while I was at Annabel’s, she pulled out her copy of Boys Boys Boys Boys Boys as I emailed her a copy of 101 Stories, and it was soooooo weird reading it again. Did I really write that? Did I really live that way? Strange. No wonder people have mentioned what a progression 101 is. But I would still really love someone to send me back a copy of Boys because I haven’t got one. Please? Someone? I know they’re mostly pretty bad photocopies anyway, but maybe someone has one of the A4 versions that they could send me? Thanking you in advance.

Other things that are good in my life right now is meeting up with the rest of the Wellingtonista crew tonight for martinis (except for me because I am under 30), and then a cocktail party tomorrow night for Cinta’s hens’ night. Then on Sunday dinner for Karen’s birthday. On a much healthier for me note, I signed up to do personal training boxing sessions today. I’ll get to hit stuff! Yay! I think that will be fucking awesome stress release, and also I’m trying to mix up my exercising, because I don’t want to get bored and I really need to step things up for the sake of my wrist and also not dying on the flight to America.

I am so looking forward to America, like woah. The time is creeping closer and closer. In fact, America at the Country Club is next Saturday August 12. We’re having a kegger Frat/Sorority party with John Hughes and Showgirls. And a pillow fight. And junk food. And initiation ceremonies and hazing. You should come along. In real America news, I rang Kate at some ungodly hour last Friday night when I got home. I was aiming for her birthday but kind of missed, and also I was drunk and lonely, and I miss her! All the same, I’m really not looking forward to the phonebill.

This afternoon I am sniggering at the Peaches CD I’m listening to and trying to postpone doing more phone calls, but since there are a hundred people on my list (almost literally – once I finish assembling my list there will be anyway), I suppose I shouldn’t put that off for much longer. Work is interesting right now in terms of RFPs, and black holes, and also new projects that I am working on, and the fact that I went on some weird trip on Tuesday and cleared out about four things I’d been sitting on for months. Go me. And now I must go and pee. It’s important that I tell you this, honest.

Finally, just some links to things I’ve been up to lately – TV Squee / Rockstar Obsession / Pirate and Auckland photos. That’s about all. OH! And I have an RSS feed that works now, which I would add in to the bottom of the page, except that without a laptop I can’t FTP in, but you can find it at http://hubris.co.nz/rss apparently, according t the wise Heather. That’s it now. Ask me some questions about what you would like me to tell you about.