Hubris.co.nz

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

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

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

Once again, I have been neglectful, and for that I apologise. But look outside. Do you really expect me to be indoors at my computer when it’s as gorgeous as it has been for the past week? Well yes, as a matter of fact, I spent all day at my dining room table typing away, because I slept very badly last night and consequently felt like shit this morning, and so asked permission to work from home. And that’s not even “work from home” as I did a page by page analysis of our site, proofreading, editing and planning for the future – and there’s about 100 pages on it. I was particularly impressed with one page that has “Image: please supply an image and caption in landscape form” developed as part of the text body, in title tags even, becasue um, hello, wakey wakey whoever developed it. Which wasn’t me. It was a long long boring job, but it was made easier by the fact that I was in my pyjamas, and Sebastian was curled at my feet, and all the doors and windows in the house were open to let in some air. That was much better than being in the office. It was also great that I managed to do three loads of washing whilst working hard, and also in my lunchbreak I went for a swim.

I have been doing much swimming lately, sometimes in my totally hott new togs, running to the beach after work, or on the weekend when I got totally sunburnt on Sunday. But let’s talk about the total and utter joy of last Friday first. In fact, let me paste in my drunken summation of it:

So, today I was clever and took my togs to work. But sadly, at lunch today as I wasn’t going to the gym, I ended up spending $50 at Farmers on lip gloss, tweezers, handcream and eye shadow. Then I thought I would pop into Zebranos cos they were having a sale, amnd I found a dress that I thought would be okay to try on since it was two sizes smaller than I thought i needed, but it ended up being fucking hot, if a little Twee-able, so I ended up buying it, on the rationa that it was $250 cheaper than usual on account of the sale (skipping that it meant it was $200), and then I had to go to Farmers again to buy a slip to go under it. Then at 5pm I ran away and took at #15 and went to the children’s playground near the Tugboat and found AWESOME private changing rooms and put my togs on and then Karen was there and we went SWIMMING! She pointed and made “want to?” motions at me, and so we decided that yes, we would swim out to the raft anchored in the harbour. It was about 100 metres out, and I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to make i, because while I am an excellent frolicker and floater, actual swimming isn’t actually my thing. But I paddled out there, and clambered on board, and felt my heart go bang bang bang, and we hung out there until we saw hordes of wetsuited people heading for us, so I dived in, and OW, must have done a booby flop cos while I thought it was a good dive, it hurt my tits like woah, but I swam back to the show mostly, and woah like FUN!

PS my dress is AWESOME

It is good when things are awesome. When I saw my counsellor last Tuesday I told her I kind of didn’t even want to come and see her since I was feeling so good and I knew that talking to her would be hard, and we talked about that some more. She asked me about my relationships and I laughed, and later she said “do you think you deliberately go for unavailable men?” and I laughed and laughed and laughed, not just because it’s funny because it’s true, but also because it seems like such a counselling cliche. I feel a little like she’s trying to tick every box with me, because now we have decided on something she says that many of the things about me are typical of that thing. But the thing that is grand is that she made me realise that while the pills have started to work, and the sun plays a part in lifting my mood I can also be proud of all the work that I have done to get myself into this state of being mostly okay again. So hurrah for me! What a clever girl I am.

What else do I have to tell you about? Tomorrow I am going to the Great Blend where people will no doubt refer to me as a blogger, and I will no doubt cringe. On Saturday February 10, I will celebrate ten years of Internetting. Yes, I surfed before, but that was the first day that I stumbled upon IRC, and therefore became addicted. In July I will have had a personal site for ten years. Ten years. Imagine that! And on that note, it must be time to put away my computer for the night. I am tired from doing so many loads of washing, and work, and making pesto, and cooking Papas Garbanzo for Lisa, and then going for a sunset swim at Lyall Bay. But before I go, I must throw mad props to Tori Spelling, because Donna Martin in Season One? Fucking hilarious.

Yesterday was pretty much the first summer day that I’ve had all summer holidays, and so of course it was also the day that felt like I didn’t need to go back on pills. Nevertheless I took my half, as I’m easing onto them for the first week and headed off to Newtown for blood tests, and was somewhat surprised that the woman in the clinic didn’t wear gloves while she was doing it. Granted, it does seem all very clean and stuff, and maybe she didn’t want to disturb her manicure, and she’d obviously done it before because I hardly felt the needle go in at all, but still, shouldn’t she have worn gloves? Anyone?

Afterwards I came back home and sanded down one of my small bookshelves and spray painted it golden. Then I went to the beach! Yes, that’s how hot it was. I had my first swim of the summer – if you don’t count the night that I finished up at CWA – and I realised as I was in the cold water at my special secret cove (okay, so there is a concreted path and a handrail down to it, so it’s not actually that secret, but it is the perfect place to swim and yet is often populated only by two other people) that it was a really good way to describe the physical manifestation of the anxiety I’ve been feeling – like you know how when you get in really really cold water your breathing becomes really shallow and your heart rate speeds up? It’s like being like that all the time.Other things going through my head nonstop is the line from The Killers’ newish album which I have been listening to despite my total hatred of Brandon Flowers, and I am much enamoured of ‘When you were young’, so I’m all about the “you sit alone in your heartache / waiting for some beautiful boy to save you”, because I am still 14 and still thinking that Nuno should have been there and busted in and saved me and consequently I will always be expecting someone to save me from myself. And I’ve been so with the trying to figure out exactly where everything went wrong with my life that on New Year’s Eve if I’d had her number I probably would have called up my form one teacher, Ms. Petz, and asked her why she didn’t like me. Because I am teh crazy after all, and all of this stuff keeps me up at night and can’t turn off in my head. Except not so much yesterday, because as I said the sun was shining and that meant that I actually got things done. I did two loads of washing, hung them on the line to dry and actually folded them and put them away afterwards. I changed my sheets. I sanded down a bookshelf and spraypainted it gold, and then put coats of spray-on varnish on it. I installed new shelves in the kitchen. It was fucking amazing how much of a positive effect the sun had.

Today of course, the sun wasn’t out and so I stayed in bed for a couple of hours reading Danielle Steele before I managed to get my shit together to go to the warehouse to buy frames for my art – via the Maranui Surf Cafe, of course. And then I realised that I shouldn’t have taken my half pill on an empty stomach because I got spacey and nauseous, and I spent what felt like hours in the Warehouse, eyes glazed over in the DVD section, fighting impulse buy urges – I want to watch Deadwood but they only had the second series, I probably wouldn’t be that in to 21 Jump Street now that I’m actually old enough to stay up past 8pm and would therefore be able to watch it if it was on TV now, and then I decided that I didn’t need to spend $85 on Beverly Hills 90210 (and got it for $25 US from Amazon instead, natch). I did, however, come across The Breakfast Club by itself for $14, but decided to get the triptich with Weird Science and Sixteen Candles instead. The eighties’ movie fest continues. I felt sick for a couple of hours and weak and kitten-like, so I’ve been hiding under my duvet on the couch since I got home, you know, just for a change. Lisa came over and we watched The Breakfast Club together and made really smutty dirty jokes about the movie and also about a choice selection of NZ musicians. You know, just for a change as well.

I’m starting to feel a bit like Osama Bin Laden here. I mean, apart from the bit where he fancies Whitney Houston and plots to kill people, of course. Just that me sitting here, sending journal entries out into the ether as proof of my continued existence instead of actually talking to people. I am still ducking the phone, and I have emails from some nice people I should reply to, but oh man, that just seems like so much effort. I should talk to people and find out about what’s going on in their lives instead of just thinking about mine. And I will. Soon. It’s going to be sunny tomorrow, right?

Okay my dear loyal readers from around the world, I need your help. In fact, it’s not just me that needs your help, it’s Africa. Which also happens to be the subject of the next Country Club. Yes, since we’ve neglected that continent so badly so far, we’re going to do it all at once on September 2, and we’re going to do it like Live Aid. And therefore you should too, and then we can link it up all around the world. And that’d be awesome. In Wellington, we’ll dress up like rockstars, eat some Africanish food (that as I plan it in my head bears more than a little similarity to the Caribbean feast, but that’s where the origins were, I suppose) and then we’re going to do Singstar and deliver our stunning concert performances. I’m going to suggest to everyone who comes that they might like to make a donation to a charity that I’ll finalise later, so that as well as having the awesome time that we always have at Country Club, we can do a little bit of good as well. Awesome. And now that’s out of the way, on with the week!

And the second thing that I wanted to talk about in the general category is who is subscribed to my rss feed? Only Jessie is listed publically. Come on kids, you show me yours and I’ll show you mine. And here I go with the showing:

Lessons Learnt on Thursday

It’s cold, but not as cold as it has been, and I’m feeling quite snug. I have also just finished my last assignment – designing a business card, advertisement and another cd cover. My ad was for a rave called “Olympia” and it featured a 3D logo typa thing. I made up dj names for it, so there was DJ Twin, cos I was talking to Shirley on the phone, Fork, Spook, and then I started looking around my desk for Molko, Bik, and Korma. Oh and Colour By Numbers, which was an allusion to the number thing I was reading Shirley at the time as well.

Why is it that whenever I’m brokest I go shopping? Maree and I went to St. Lukes today (I rang her – she was like “I was just about to call you, only I thought ‘no, must not call joanna, must study, must not call joanna’ “) so that we could find birthday presents for Shirley, but instead I found myself buying a pressie for Kini, because when I saw it I knew she had to have it, and I love her lots and stuff. And Maree convinced me I needed more foundation, and I DID need saline solution, and a budget hoodie, so I was well served. Except of course, for not getting Shirley a pressie. I will have to look again tomorrow. Oh, we also cut Maree a key, so now Kimmy Gibbler can come over whenever she wants. And she can house-sit for us.

Our ad in the Herald rang today, but only one guy rang about the flat, and he seemed put off by the fact that there’d be four of us in the house. Go figure. He sounded boring anyway. We still have ads up at uni and AUT, and will have a couple in the trade and exchange coming out on Monday, but it just seems like a lost cause really. I’m stressed, yes, but Brad is calm, and it’s him that’s going to be left here alone whilst Clay and I trot off on our holidays. Although of course, Maree will be around. She’s driving me mad lately calling me “cutie cutie cutie”. Apparently she thinks the number of guys that I have slept with is extremely cute. I’m not sure I agree with her, but I guess the fact that I’ve uncontrollably started sucking my thumb doesn’t help much either. Brad keeps on laughing at me for that too. And if Clayton was ever home, he probably would as well. Man, I’ve become such a target for ridicule! It’s just not fair!!!!!

Three more sleeps to go! I am very very excited, as you can imagine I would be. Our house is such a pigstye right now – I dont’ know whether I should clean it before I go or not. Brad reckons this is our equilibrium, half way between the mess of Simon, and the clean of Thomas. Gosh, I quote an awful lot of other people, don’t I? Oh yeah, I wanted to quote this too:

From: “Peter Mahoney”
Date: June 14, 2000 7:37:20 AM EDT
To: Joanna McLeod

“Peter and Kate M were discussing my journal tonight at the bar, cos they’re both sometimes readers. ”

Sometimes readers? I’m so desparate for human connection these days that I actually got on the net tonight *just* to see if you’d added anything new to your journal.

Heh. It’s always nice when there are people sadder than me. I still haven’t fixed my desk chair. I’ve stolen a dining room chair instead. Oh, remind me to ring Dr. White tomorrow and reassure her that I’m still alive. And I must ring Penny and invite her for saturday, and do some more laundry, and write a packing list. My life is very exciting, as you can see. Yaaaaaaaaaaaay I turned in my report on my cd rom today. Brad had lent me his laptop last night so I could work on it in the lurve tent. Damn I wanna laptop now. I felt so New Media. If only it was an ibook. Right, I’m just rambling now. I should stop. Okay.

Oooh I got my first birthday card yesterday, from Karen – it was one of those square cards that I really dig, and it had a picture of a girl on it, and the words “Drama Queen”. Bitch!

Thursday; September the 30th, 1999

I’m feeling so lonely that I went onto IRC and sat in #teen while the kinderwhores – or maybe it was Jess, in which case she isn’t a whore, told me I looked really good in the last shot, and I thought that was pretty funny since I was crying.

Oh, Brad came home, which was good cos I had chocolate and company for a little bit. He also told me funny stories about his work at the Video store. He had to ring up a family to report that “Japanese Sex Tours” was out, and the father was like “what, we never rented that” and ended up coming down to the shop to rage about how someone had let his 14 year old son rent porn. Poor Brad was like “I’m so sorry – it wasn’t me!”

Yesterday night was cool, bonding with Kate M who hung around to watch Topless Women Talk About Their Lives with me (again) and she plaited my hair. I made her watch Pokemon Island, and we all talked like pokemons when Brad got home.

Today I did laundry. Simon’s gone to Wellington. I’m lonely and wanting hugs.

Oh yeah, there’s a bit more Australia story if you want.

Thursday 25; February, 1999

Got out of bed to the phone ringing, pulling on my dressing gown and was kinda short to Clayton’s friend Antz, practically hanging up before I remembered it would be polite to say “do you want me to take a message?” But he didn’t. So I stripped my bed, and put my light washing in the machine, and then went back for a bit more of a lie-in. When I went to put my dark washing on, I realised that there had been a sponge in the tub, and I’d flooded the laundry. Aces.

Anyways, so finally I managed to leave the house, and I stopped in Newmarket to get out $800 at ANZ and carry it up to ASB to pay the rent. The guy at ASB was really nice and sympathetic, because of course I moaned out the whole story when he asked. Man, it was fun having that much cash in my hands, even temporarily. Then I went to some crap-ass cafe and had a coffee, just to perk up a trifle before my three hour tv workshop.

Because we’re Year 2 this year, we don’t use the m100 cameras anymore, we use some bigass flash pro 2000s or something like that, which are apparently worth $10,000 each. Scary shit man – that’s like waaaaaay too much responsibility to place in my hands! We had to divide up into groups to do stuff, and we had Dan in our group. Dan who’s 23 and has a background of making short films. He was being sooooooooo patronising about all the technical stuff, and I just couldn’t see anything because I wasn’t wearing my contacts (my bottle of cleaning fluid has vanished somewhere into my room), and I was bored. We spent like 45 minutes getting two shots. It’s funny how paranoid people are when they think they’re being filmed getting out money from an ATM. OH! And I have another mini story sort of on that note – this morning when I was in the bank, I sat down at one of the counters that had two chairs at it, next to a counter that had no chairs. This old woman comes up, goes “Excuse me” and took the other chair but moved it over to the other counter. So what am I – chopped liver?

Man it’s pouring hard. I’m glad Si and Leyton were kind enough to bring in my washing. I was kind to them and hung most of my underwear up in my room (there’s this really weird line of nails sticking out of one of the walls that worked a treat). I guess I’m just really paranoid about people handling my underthings. One thing that really bugged me last year was whenever I went to Hamilton, Andee would always paw through my bag or suitcase (depending on whether or not I was enroute to somewhere else or just down for the weekend) looking for cool clothes that she could wear.

Oh yeah but back to my day. So yeah, after the three hour workshop (which was actually two and a bit) I went up to Auckland Uni and wandered around the Quad there for ages, clambering up staircases all over the place, looking for the Craccum office. They hide themselves away pretty well, above the Koreans singing Boyzone in the clubspace. I like their office because its trajic state made me feel so much happier about the mess in my room. Anyways, I went to proofread for them, so I did. And ate their pizza, and rejected their offer of smokes. Like, I haven’t had pot in ages, and I would quite like to have some, just not right after eating. I’d rather just have my own stash so that I could get giggly when I felt like it, instead of getting drunk and moody. Anyways, Craccum was amusing, and I feel special cos I think my name gets published. As ‘Jo McLeod’ actually, which is kinda weird, cos I’ve stopped being Jo reccently because of the lovely Eaton lass. But that’s okay. People won’t know it’s me, so I’ll be like, incognito. No, honestly they don’t have someone from AIT helping out. It was funny how much Nexus, and Hammy in general got mocked.

Then once I’d proofread the whole thing, and fed it back to Matt while he made changes onto the puter, I figured my work there was done, so I walked up to the bus stop. Checking my cellphone, I saw I’d missed a message from Trudie, so I rang her back but she didn’t answer. However, while I was on the bus, Kate rang me, wanting me to go over, but instead she agreed to meet me back at my place. Mmmm. So yeah, I got home and then she came over. We sat in the lounge giggling for ages, squeezing the inflatable aliens for a bit. (Simon and I are starting a blow-up toy collection – all donations gratefully accepted). Kate just got hooked up to the net today, and she said she was surfing with her flatmate Matt, when he read the stuff I wrote about him (“kinda cute, but I’m SO over the stoner thing. Being a little more on-to-it is kind of a bonus”) and complained that he IS on to it. Hahahaha. Guess I won’t be going back to her flat then!

We realised that we were fully obsessed with the aliens, so we started playing that props game from “Whose Line is It Anyway?” with them. “Oh, an extra leg!” and “yes, it’s a real fur, darling”. I guess you kinda sorta had to be there. Actually, no, cos Clayton and Si and Leyton were all there, and were greatly bemused while Kate and I just about died in fits of giggles. I think the boys were more entertained when Kate and I started beating each other up with the Aliens. Man, we gave each other such a fucking huge walloping!!! She wacked me one right across my face, and it hurt like a motherfucker cos it crushed my glasses into my nose. Then we went into the kitchen and screamed at each other, to the great annoyance of the lads who were trying to sleep. Kate had the audacity to call me a slut, and Si joined in, calling me a Hoe. I was like “WELL AT LEAST I’M MAKING MONEY OFF OF IT!!!!!!!!”. That shut them up.

And that’s shut me up too now.

xoxoxoxo