Hubris.co.nz

A while ago, I started a Mixtape Club on NZM. The first assignment was a mixtape based on other mixtapes you’ve received. It took a fuck of a long time to get everyone’s submissions in, but finally I (kind of) did. Here are the linear notes that accompanied mine, so you can play along at home!

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.

Let’s make one thing clear: Birds is every bit as good as you expect an album from Bic Runga to be, and it’s going to sell quite a few copies. Runga has always had enough confidence in herself to produce her own albums, and for her third effort she has brought a backing band that is a who’s who of NZ talent, including Shayne Carter, Neil Finn and Ricky Gooch. Birds is more melancholic than Beautiful Collision, and far more textured than Drive. The result is something unbelievably exquisite. On the first couple of listens it comes across almost as a little bit country, especially on the bluegrass intro to ‘No crying no more’. Meanwhile ‘Blue blue heart’ is such pop perfection with its thumping piano and “oh la la” chorus it could have been written by mid-career Beatles. Runga shows exceptional control over her voice as it rises and soars over violins in the title track, while when she is backed by singers Anika Moa and Anna Coddington on ‘It’s over’ it is spine tingling and perfect. The intricate details on Birds make it an album to listen to on repeat, as each listen will reveal new beauty.
5/5

Pulp

So two Wellington musicians get together to work on some music. You’ve heard this story many times before, but there’s a couple of twists: Matthew Mitchell is now living in Hungary and so his work with Bevan Smith (Aspen, Marineville) was done entirely online using p2p technology. Also, Skallander sound like many things and like nothing else all at the same time.

Thickly textured and layered with intricate detailing, Skallander is a chunky blend of lo-fi, electronica, and indie, which sometimes suggests Smith’s other projects, or perhaps The Phoenix Foundation. The title track, which is undoubtedly the album’s highlight even sounds a fair bit like American Music Club relocated to Wellington. It’s easy listening music for the complicated person. The Camels is one of those soft albums perfect to crawl into at the end of a long day and it comes highly recommended.

Pulp

Moloko always excelled at making quirky entertaining music that was still danceable, and now that she is on her own, Rosin Murphy has maintained that standard. Her voice is the first thing that stands out, as a sort of Margaret Thatcher meets Beth Gibbons enchantment, and the lyrics are playful to match. On ‘If We’re In Love’, the first single she asks “if we’re in love, why don’t we make love?” while on ‘Through Time’ she wonders “how did you predict the end of the world when you can?t see past your nose?”

The production of the album by collaborator Mathew Herbert (Bjork’s Vespertine) is as distinctive as Roisin’s voice. Some songs, like ‘Off on it’ with its horn section sound like scratchy old jazz records while others like ‘Sow Into You’ are pure pop with clicky house beats like Moloko’s biggest hit ‘Sing it back’, yet all tracks have their own very different identity. On the album highlight ‘Ramalama (bang bang)’, drums pound along like the George of the Jungle theme song transported to Mars ? and it works. Ruby Blue is like nothing else you will hear this year, and it is utterly brilliant.

4.5/5

Pulp

Sometimes it’s nice to know that your employer values you – or at least is happy to shell out a large amount of money on opportunity costs of having your entire company running around on Friday afternoon with DV cams making little videos about your company. Did I ever tell you that I work for a New Media company? I suspect that the previous sentence might have revealed that if you didn’t already know. Because we didn’t have any video production people in our group – we were mostly project managers and editors, we decided to take a really ‘organic’ approach and shoot our video in sequence to save on the editing. We went with my idea of making a recruitment video, and loaded it up with really bad puns and me hosting the video with signs, saying things like “To work at *, you’ll need to be great at juggling many projects” – to have the camera pan over to someone juggling potatos, and “it also helps to be really flexible” with workmates doing back bends and somersaults in the background. For the “you’ll be working closely with your colleagues” we had three sets of feet visible under the shower curtain. Hott.

After that (although quite a lot later, cos most of the other groups finished really late although we finished quarter of an hour early), there were drinks. Many many drinks in fact, and although I was supposed to go and meet Karen for dinner, we’d got pizza so I wasn’t hungry, and I was having far too much fun having very inappropriate conversations with my workmates (the word “quiffing” was used a lot, which they claim is a fanny fart. I’m not entirely sure that it’s a real word). But I knew Karen was pissy at me, so I headed over to her house just before 9pm. Arriving with leftover brownies, and also potato chips and wine appeased her somewhat, I believe. So we chatted, and I had a shower (and didn’t puke in it) and we trotted off to Indigo to meet up with Dave and his friend who turned out to be rather cute and exciteable like a puppy – but not Humpy-like, if you get the difference (or even the injoke).

I’m being stalked – again. Friday night, and then today outside my place of work, oh and also that one time in March 2002 (<3 google desktop, although if I ever decide to become obsessed with anything that I’ve been obsessed with in the past, I will be in a lot of trouble – assuming that you define trouble as “reading many old entries” as I sometimes do). But anyways, the stalker. I was at 24 Hour Party People, and I went to the bathroom, and there was a cute girl there who was like “HEY! You’re Joanna!” and I was like…….. and she was like “I’m blah blah blah, and we’ve actually met before” and I was like “oh yeah!” and I did actually remember who she was, which is incredibly impressive for me, and she said she was stalking me, and had a crush on me, and it might have been then that I picked her up and swung her around as much as I could, or that may have been later when she introduced herself to my companions as “Joanna’s stalker”. Awww how sweet! Except I think she was laughing at me today. But like with any stalkers – or indeed the very minute number of people who say that they have crushes on me, it’s like “and then?” (speaking of Chinese drive through people, Anji and I discovered that the Chinese takeaway in Hataitai is awesome. But back to the main narrative…). Or, as Katy – and the bard – put it “Would you leave me so unsatisfied? / What satisfaction can you get tonight? / Howsabout you lick my clit, bitch?” Ahh people who quote Shakespeare, how nice it is to know you.

I impressed yet more of Katy’s friends by not taking shit from them, and dishing it straight back (“Oh, you work at a cinema huh? So what’s your film script about then?”) and we hung out until around 4am when it was time to go home via the takeaway shop and some very amusing discussion with some very very drunk young boys.

Oooooh Nightline just played some remix of the Prodigy’s ‘Voodoo People’ and i got an involuntary flashback feeling in my stomach. Crazy. Nevermind. Let me catch up with myself. Hmmmm, where was I at? Saturday? Ahh yes. Saturday. The day was really weird and I had no idea of what was going on because I’d lost my cellphone – Anji kindly ended up picking it up for me from Indigo and I don’t have a clock in my room. In the evening after the aforementioned good Chinese, I drove her into town for SJD and swung past New World for brunch supplies cos I was hoping that either Anne or Brad would be joining me for Alf’s 60th birthday party the next morning.

As it happens, I ate my brunch alone, and got choked up when they showed a brief flashback of Shane dying on a rock. I am crazy! CRAZY! And I napped, and drove Ethel back into town to pick up Anji, who is the new proud parent of an iPod Mini so she’s gone Walking Crazy, and we did the supermarket shopping, and I made a tangine, and Brad came over for dinner, and Shiny Shiny Steve(n) sang CREED and Oh, I was overwhelmed with a strange combination of lust and amusement.

Work was a bit streesssssssssful today. They’ve put me on the schedule so that I can be booked like any common resource. Oh the pain. Then I had lunch with Mum, which was surprisingly pleasant. The Tasting Room does food + a beer or a coffee for $15. Since I am doing Hard Work (my email to limegreen today said something like “I am supposed to be writing a guide to the wazoo when I don’t even know where it is!” and he said something about how he’d heard how large and impressive my wazoo was, and I got offended, cos dude, who wants someone to say “my, what a large roomy asshole you have”?) so I had the coffee instead of the beer. The steak sandwich was served with really really good fries, and also two big onion rings in it, but it’s on very garlicy garlic bread, so make sure if you eat it you pick up some peppermints afterwards.

I just had a moment of remembering exactly why I used to be so in love with The West Wing when CJ told Josh she’d cook him dinner, and he asked if she’d wear an apron and she said she’d wear anything he wanted, and his eyes went !!!!!!!! I think I’ll stop this now. Oh, and some guy saying to Toby “what if they have seven or eight kids?” and Toby says “tell them to try renting a DVD sometime instead” – remind me again why I stoppped watching this show?

I haven’t been writing as often as I would have liked to have been writing. I think that’s partly because my last entry was so fucking mammoth, and partly because some of the noise in my head is NOT FOR YOU (which is sad actually, that I feel the need to censor myself because now more than ever there are more people that I know reading my journal than there ever used to be). I need to do more writing though. Last week I wrote 14 album reviews in one day. That perhaps wasn’t the best way to do it, but oh well, you get what I’m paid for. And I don’t get paid for these reviews. Just a heads up though, I’m loving Ghostplane and The Cloud Room and Art Brut and rully not loving HIM. Strangely enough. If we’re going to get all the recent things I’ve enjoyed out of the way too, I must spend a couple of sentences talking about Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which kept me enthralled for weeks and weeks, the mountain of a book that it is, although it gave me a creepy undercurrent of unease every time I read it, in a way not dissimilar to House of Leaves. And I was a little unsatisfied by the ending I think, it all seemed to come to a stop really soon after all the build up, but it was indeed bloody excellent.

Okay, on with the show. What have I been up to the past week? Hmm. On Thursday, we had a quiz night at work. I think I impressed several people with my dazzling knowledge of mostly useless facts AND I managed to drink quite a lot too. What an achievement! While I wasn’t hungover the next day, I was full of cringe for arriving at work two hours late – when I’d woken up at 7.50am, I reset my alarm clock, as I always do, but I made it 7.30 instead of 8.30, and so it didn’t go off, and so I didn’t get up and oh the crapness that is me. That combined with things like Thursday Morning Teas, and taking off on the dot of 5pm on Friday to go up to the other building to polish off the beers left over from the quiz night has meant that my output is down. But I will also put that down to the fortnightly cycle. Yes.

Anyways, drinks on Friday were pleasant and amusing as usual. I went home around 8ish I think, cos we’d finished the beer, and I brought takeaways and put on my pajamas and settled down to watch TV. But then I was like “no! I want to go out!”, and I was still annoyed cos I was supposed to be hanging with Dave but he’d gone out with my sister the night before to an event I hadn’t been invited to and was too hungover. So I texted Katy, and found out that she was intending to go to Ghostplane, so I ran a hairdryer over my hair and dusted off my chucks. I was apprehensive about showing up and being a no-mates, but I didn’t want to stay at home any longer, so after texting Lisa Ratpony and discovering she was going to be on her way, and knowing that Kartini and Co would be there, I set off via eftpos taxi. Stupid no cashness.

I found Kartini & Mike and LisaB at the bar, and so I hung out with them. I really must remember what Lisa’s last name is more in the future, to avoid the sort of confusion that happened a couple of weeks ago with the girl whose birthday party it was not being that Lisa Lisa. Not that it was the end of the world or anything, but y’know, it just makes sense to know where you’re going or why you’re there. Meestar were playing, and they sounded pretty choice, even though I only know one song of theirs and that’s off a CD called Pimpu wa doko desuka? (Where are the pimps anyway?), so we sat outside and they smoked instead. It was a pretty damn cold night out in Wellington, and only two of the heaters were on, so I was glad to go inside when Ghostplane started playing. The stage was all set up with blue and green lights and waves and stuff, in keeping with the whole Under the Lagoon theme, and damn it looked purty. Then Katy showed up, and I felt like talking to her, so we went outside again, because as you know, people who talk near the stage at gigs are evil motherfuckers who need to be killed a lot. There was much discussion of graffiti in the toilets – including one particular piece that needed to have a last name censored out of it (by the way, has anyone found my KA messages yet?) and more beer was drunk, and blah blah blah, it was just a really good time, and I’m so glad I left the house again. Katy and I split a cab home via takeaway cheesecake from Midnight and I stayed up late watching watching taped Rockstar: INXS and getting teary at Jordis’s ‘Imagine’ and Marty’s ‘Wish You Were Here’. Awww bless.

Then I was forced to make a really hard decision in a two party system. Would I vote Newtown or Brooklyn for election coverage watching? Well, I went with the one with Hott Boy possibilities (Jimmy aside, of course, because obviously he’s SHRN, but not this particular Hott Boy). Saturday was DEMOCRACY DAY, and I was as excited as a kid at Xmas, except I was also terrified that there might be cunts in this country who would sell us out for an extra $20 a week who would result in us all getting a rather nasty lump of coal in our metaphorical stockings. But when Anji got home, I LITERALLY (not really) skipped up to the polling booth. We debated for a while about where to go (email suggestions telling me where to go are welcome) and since she wasn’t entirely sure if she was registered in Wellington Central or Rongotai we decided we’d give the school on Elizabeth St a go, since we were going to be going to Liquor King anyways. Since I’d spilled beer on my red top the night before, I was all about my green t shirt. I had debated with myself and others long and hard about whether or not to vote Labour or Green with my party vote, and the night before i’d finally decided to do what was in my heart, and on the basis of them being the only party ot talk about public transport, I went Green. I was going to be ticking the Annette King box anyways, so I was all red and green like an Xmas tree. Of course, I got to stick it in the special short box since i was out of my electorate – like many other green voters, I’m hoping. But perhaps we’ll come to that later.

Supermarket shopping was done and vodka was purchased, although I do kind of not like the fact that I got ID’d for vodka but not for voting – I mean, which one is more important? Then I made three flavours of vodka jelly (Raspberry Labour, Lime Green and Orange elections) and napped and blah blah blah, then it was a green scarf wrapped around my neck and red raspberry fizz to go with my vodka, and off to Kartini’s went I. You know what’s fucking choice? Watching TV with people who say things like “I think Steven Parker has a Giles-like past” and knowing what they mean, and then having those same people later compare Gerald Brownlee to Crab and Goyle. Ahhhh politics + pop culture = SHRN. We cheered and cheered every time Labour went up a .1, and cackled when National went down. We also drank in delight when the marvelous John Campbell threw shoutouts to the drinking game, saying “I just have to cut in now – oh and that means that all you drinking game players need to drink now”. How incredibly meta. I think I might try to develop a line of DVDs of cult movies with drinking game rules built in as subtitles. OI, BACK OFF, PREDATORS. Anyways. Maybe you should play a drinking game with my journal whereby you take a drink every time I do, and also every time I use my phrase de jour (such as SHRN). That’d rock. Rock! Okay, now you must drink.

After that, Katy tried to call her parents in Mexico so we missed out on a taxi with some people so we took another one in to a place in town which is a place of work where people were drinking, and the lovely Nial put a beer in my hands while some guy was metaphorically humping Katy’s legs, so I went to the bathroom and texted her that, and then when I came back he was literally doing it. Ahh it’s nice to be back on the Internet where I can make jokes about Humpy and know that youse guys get it. Or at least the footnoters do anyways. Go Level Two Hubrettes! I tried to be brave and stalk a hott boy across town, but when I finaaaaaaaaaaaally got to where he was, he was just on his way home. Sigh. Spring sucks! I am so in desperate need of being sprung. Of course I am on heat for many many boys but this is the only one that I could imagine actually telling. I think he’d be the kind to appreciate the straight talk.

Speaking of appreciating my pajamas (ha! see how I slipped in a masturbation joke right there? No? Well I’ve obviously not slept with you then), Sunday was a perfect day for duvets and pjs and DVDs. It was also good for getting texts with HOT GOSSIPICIOUS SCANDAL from Karen (for those in the know: it’s the same thing again), and roast dinners around the dining room table. How civilised!

But I’m still feeling a little sad, because on Sunday morning I dreamt I was at my book launch, and it was the most fantastic elaborate party ever – there were huge big trays going around with large slabs of expensive European chocolate, and kiwifruit champagne was pouring by the gushful, and lots of people I loved were there, but no one would give me a copy of my book, and I knew I wasn’t particularly happy with it, because it was something that I’d started writing in seventh form English, and I threw a tantrum at the publishers because they hadn’t arranged for me to actually get to read the book before it was published. Then after I’d stopped crying, and I’d left the party, I bumped into someone who used to be a big part of my life, and I wanted to show him my fabulous achievement, when he was all “oh, check out this book I just wrote” and I was trying to find a copy of mine and I couldn’t. Waking up and finally remembering that I haven’t actually written a book was even more devestating than the time I woke up and realised that I wasn’t actually recording an album in Bic Runga’s studio.

EDIT: Inspired by Heather’s comment, I now present A VERY EXCITING COMPETITION. Create ten rules for a Hubris drinking game. Best entries win hott prizes. Post them below.

It’s a good thing that Nick Cave only plays at being a Baptist preacher, because otherwise I would be converted after his concert last night.

The Town Hall was a lot smaller than I remembered it being, but eventually I figured out that was probably because the stage needed to be so large in order to accomodate all eleven people on stage – four gospel singers, two percussionists, a bassist, a guitarist, an organist (keyboard player? what is the prefered title these days?) a violinist, another guitarist/keyboard player, and of course Cave himself, who paced around the stage, sometimes cat-like, sometimes kicking out his legs in glee, dancing like a marionette or worshiping his fellow musicians.

The gig was sold-out, so I was hoping that everyone in the crowd would be feverishly worshipful fans, who would know to SHUT THE FUCK UP when he was playing, especially during the quieter songs, but alas, some dirty looks were needed to be dealt out when he was playing ‘Easy Money’ and the song that is a serious contender for the first dance at my wedding, ‘Babe you turn me on’(because when he says “I put one hand on your round ripe heart / And the other down your panties” I just about keel over in a swoon – plus it’s got dreamy waltzy timing).

As far as songs go, the set was dominated by their recentish Abattoir Blues / Lyre of Orpheus , (‘There She Goes, My Beautiful World’, ‘Abattoir Blues’, ‘Breathless’, ‘Supernaturally’ and one of the highlights for me, ‘O Children’), as well as obvious standouts from their long career – ‘Red Right Hand’; ‘The Mercy Seat’ which built up until the sound was so solid you could breathe it in; ‘Deana’ which made people dance like crazy; ‘Do you love me?’ which was just as dark and menacing as it could be; and a couple of ones that I didn’t know, one of which he said was on their b-sides album and a very soothing song about God being in the house. When they came back for their second encore, he played the first couple of notes of ‘The Ship Song’ and I felt pathetic because my eyes welled up. I have to say that “We talked about it all night long / we defined our moral ground / but when I crawled into your arms / everything comes tumbling down” is right up there with the most expressive and vivid lyrics ever. And then of course there was the song they played afterwards, ‘Stagger Lee’ whose lyrics are somewhat different – “I’m a bad motherfucker, don’t you know / that I’ll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get to one fat boy’s asshole / said Stagger Lee”, but fuck me if seeing that live wasn’t one of the sexiest things I’ve ever heard (it made me feel bad afterwards when I said to my sister “this is what it must have been like when him and PJ Harvey were fucking” and I bent my hands back and banged my wrists together to make that horrible ouch skinny sound). Plus, Stagger Lee shooting the devil? Fucking Rock.

I’ve never heard louder or more passioned cries for encores, and few bands have managed to pull off performances that deserved them quite so much.

Now that Annabel has finally received her surprise gift, I can go on and on and on and on about Pluto’s new album Pipe Line Under The Ocean. Holy fucking wow it is good. There’s a bunch of songs on there that can reduce me to tears if I was going to let them, and a bunch of songs – some of them the same – that make me want to shove my hands down the nearest set of panties (probably mine) immediately. Hott hott hott hott hott hott hott. The album came out last Monday, and luckily we got sent a copy at work so I could rip it to my computer, since I’d ordered mine from SmokeCDs.com and they didn’t arrive until Wednesday – which isn’t like a huuuuge delay, and they did make sure that i got them before my mummy’s birthday the next day since I ordered her Fur Patrol’s Collider. Anyway, I can’t recommend this album highly enough. Go get yourself a copy RIGHT NOW. It’s the nearest I’m ever going to come to my perfect fantasy of cloning the band and fucking them all while they play live. Oh yeaaaaaaaaah.

Now, speaking of fantasies, and fucking, and the nearest best thing, last night I went to a Fuckerware party and it was tremendous fun – although I ended up spending a hundred bucks more than I’d intended to. But really, when a vibrator is all shimmery and squirmy and pearly rotating and sixty dollars off, and lights up like a disco ball, how can one resist? It was the most popular purchase, and even though I don’t know the names of most of the girls at the party, it’s like we’ve got our own little club now, inappropriate as that may be to suggest to strangers. And the other thing I bought is on back order, which means I get fun delivered to me at a later date as well, hurray! Also, __ was like “omg, you’re not going to post explicitly about this in your journal are you?” so I reassured her that hey, of course I was, but I’d leave her out of it. As I did.

On a sexless note, hoooo boy I’m looking forward to tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps I will start writing the letter now.

July 5th, 2002

I’ve been reading through my old reports, because Mum found an envelope of them, and it’s extraordinary the story that they tell; at the American school I started out really smart and full of enthusiasm and blasting my way out of the remedial writing class they stuck me in thinking that I was a ‘dumb Australian’, and then as I got into seventh grade, comments read like “Joanna does not participate as much in class as she used to” and my marks start falling and there’s even “I believe underlying problems may be affecting her results”. Oh really? Underlying problems like ooooooh maybe I was being bullied every day, and I was fucking miserable and I wanted to die? Do you think that might have affected my marks. FUCK YOU to every single fucking teacher at ASIJ. Just looking at the reports, it’s so fucking obvious what was happening to me, and what the fuck did they do about it? Nothing. And my mother just now is like “Should we have taken you to a shrink so that you could realyl have fit in with those Americans?” Well, yes, maybe, Mum. Or maybe you could have spent at least one day in those four years not telling me how miserable you were, and tried to make things a little easier for me. This is so pathetic of me; this stuff was like, ten years ago, and it’s making me cry right now. I’m okay, I survived it all – thank god for Beth Dodd arriving at ASIJ in 8th grade, and for Lisa Gonser and Ryan Rimschnider leaving at the end of 7th grade.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

Last night, I went around to Fatty Si’s house. We went adn got coffee at Midnight Espresson, and then rented DVDs – Zoolander and Nurse Betty. We chatted and hung out and stuff. It was cool. He said that a long long time ago, his girlfriend at the time, Heidi, used to worry about me before she met me, cos he talked about me a lot, but then she met me and thought I was super cool and loved me. As soon as you actually meet me, you realise that there’s no way I could take your boyfriend away from you, even if I wanted to, which I don’t, ever. Ladies, I am not a threat to your man! Statistically speaking, I am far more likely to score your girlfriend. I’ve only slept with one guy who had a girlfriend, and she was far too good for him anyways (as was I, which is probably one of the main motivating factors for me to do it, since it was in the six months I spent last year trying to reach rock bottom). On the drive home, through the wilderness of Wilton, I suddenly started feeling very lonely. It was a little odd.

Now I am sitting in the very warm lounge listening to the Topless Women Talk About Their Lives soundtrack (I love this album so much, although the current association i have with it is of a sweet boy’s white bum shining in the dark as he bent over to put it on at my request), and thinking about doing some writign that i told someone I’d do for them, which I wish I hadn’t. I’m too nice, I think. But my word is my word and I hate to let people down. Maybe I’ll work on it tonight when I come home leeringly drunk from “a quiet dinner” with KateB. We’ll go BYO, drink two bottles’o wine and see where the night takes us. I get to see my baby girl again, YAY. Then I just have to spend lots’o time with Karen, Anji, go visit Oma, see Fatty again, see Hulita, adn maybe call the Rimu Crew (Bopha’s old flat). It’s probably just as well that the Welly Massive doesn’t really seem to exist anymore – Ayna’s on holiday in Indonesia and Daniel moved to Korea to teach English, cos i probably don’t have the time and energy to take e and go out dancing for hours and hours and hours.

Clay has no faith in me, or perhaps he has too much faith. Either way!

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.