Hubris.co.nz

Wednesday, June 11th

Repeat after me: free stuff is good. Awhile ago, Clayton got a postcard in the mail inviting him to the preview of ‘About a Boy’ (you know, Nick Hornby & Hugh Grant type thing etc etc) which promised food and liquor before hand as well. Clay wasn’t home at the time, so I texted him with the hypothetical question “Hey, if you should ever get free tickets to ‘About a Boy’ would you take me?” and of course, he stupidly said yes he would, so I presented him with the card when he got home. Ha. It made me laugh a lot at the time, because just the day before, i’d explained to him that generally when girls ask for things, they already know if it’s possible or not (ie: “Clay, can I borrow a half a tomato?” “Sure, there’s one in the fridge” “yes I know, that’s why I want to borrow it” etc). So anyways, that movie was today.

But if we want to veer back in time, we’ll start at the start of my day, which was some time after noon, because my bed was just so damn comfy, and also I’d been up late talking on the phone to my Attention Seeking best friend in Chch (I swear, I’m so defensive lionness with cubs eh). I think it’s so important that there are people that i can say “I mango bleach” to and worry about The Hot Potato Syndrome and they know what I’m talking about. Plus our new insult for one another is “hey, stop attention seeking” which is funny if you know the context and potentially offensive if you’re the person I got it off, but hey it actually really offended me, so there. (And I think I tried to say that in person, but I’m always so much better at bitching about it after the fact). Anyways, so where was I? Oh yeah, day at home, doing housework. I cleaned my room! You can actually see all the concrete now, which is not necessarily a good thing. And I divided my notes up into their three topics, which is half way to starting studying, isn’t it? I don’t have an exam for a week though. Blah blah.

Around 5, Clay and I walked to Newmarket for the movie thing. He mentioned that Kara would probably be really pissed off that he’d taken me and I chuckled more that was polite but oh well. Then my arch on my right foot got really really sore, so I guess that was my punishment. The free food and liquor was at Lonestar, and there were masses and masses of people so it took ages to get a drink, meaning Clay and I only managed three each in the 45 minutes that we were there. The food consisted mostly of tortillas and dip. Waiters kept walking past with plates of ribs which we wanted, but they got put on other tables and we couldn’t be bothered getting up. Some nice ladies came along and tried to pick up Clay, and he felt all special cos he knew lots of people there from his work. I should stop laughing at him so much. The theatre was also really full so we had to sit too close, but the movie was really good. Hugh Grant is getting hotter as he gets older, which is disturbing, and the kid was so cute! I want a 12 year old son. (hmm, i should have been more sexually active in 1990 and not been concentrating on getting Mum to buy me Subway shoes and a peace necklace I guess).

After the movie, we went and got Burger King, which I instantly regretted and took a bus home. Bops and Leo were sitting in the lounge patiently suffering through Buffy because I was taping it (hey man, she’s coming back from the dead!) but as soon as it was over, Clay watched the soccer that he’d taped and I made lots of phonecalls to arrange my birthday dinner. I wanted to have it at Saigon, but they’re shut on Mondays so I’m having it at a Turkish place instead. Then I rang around trying to organise my friends, most of whom didn’t answer their phones – kate & kate, I’m looking at you here. I did manage to get aholdo Justin, who said he might come, and then we talked about Brand JK reliability, which is amusing. It’s where I do most of my shopping – so I put in a pre-order as well. Ha, fuck I’m terrible. And boring.

I put the wrong link in to my birthday wishlist last night, but it just occured to me that i have to say “Hey, if you’re my friend, and you’ve had a birthday this year, and I have been to your celebration, I hope you haven’t bought me anything, because I didn’t buy you anything and I would feel (a little)bad”. See, I do have a conscience after all. Last night while I was lying in bed I realised that when work finally DOES pay me, it won’t be the one week’s salary I was expecting, it’ll be FOUR weeks, and that’s kinda really cool. OH MY GOD! THEY PAID ME! I HAVE A POSTIVE BANK BALANCE! I haven’t had one of those since i left Foodstuffs. I can pay the rent, AND the phonebill now. I can even have a good birthday, and I can buy KateH drinks tomorrow night when we go out (except that you try so hard to not talk to me about reading my journal, so you can’t ask for them so HA!). And I can ring up WINZ and cancel the $50 a week they lend me which they’ll be cancelling in a couple of weeks anyways cos I will no longer be doing enough papers to qualify as a full time student, although apparently there’s something else I can be wot says I still qualify. Sorry. It’s just really exciting.

And that’s about me for the night, eh. My neck really hurts from that damn sitting too close to the movie thing. Maybe I should have a hot bath. I wonder if that’d help me sleep. It’s funny taking herbal supplements to make me sleep because they completely relax out my body so that it feels really heavy and sinks into the mattress and I can hardly move but my mind is still going a trillion miles an hour. I’m due for a bleed in a couple of days, and I’d know that even if wasn’t for the diane35 packet telling me. Midcycle I get mad protein cravings, and then I get sleepless and my breasts get fuller and look glassy and probably in two days time I will be really really sad and cry at the drop of the hat. It’s so interesting (to me anyways) watching myself change. Go womanhood. I bet you’re all just holding your breath until I get pregnant or some mysterious wasting disease and I write about that in great length every single day. Not that I’m thinking that any of you would wish disease on me, of course (because hey, everyone loves me, right?).

I thought of a new look for Hubris that I wanna do, but I have exams and secret things and charity work and momma’s site (still) to do first. But then maybe there’ll be a logo! And tshirts! And merchandise! And branding! Perhaps.

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

Wednesday 3; Febuary, 1999
I set my alarm for 10am today. And I even woke up then too – to change the alarm to 11 and go back to sleep. It’s nice to be back with bFM again, after Channel Z in Wellington went to hell (or shore/westieville Auckland Channel Z anyways). The dj was Daniel, who’s in my tutorial at AIT. So that was nice, a familiar voice, and some good tunes. I’d actually woken up at 5.30am again, ankles covered in bites, which is never cool, but had gone back to sleep.

Once I did finally manage to drag myself out of bed, I got clean and all that good stuff and jumped on a bus into Newmarket. I had to recharge the Mercury card (god it’s annoying that the post shop up the road can’t do it) and also, I’d realised the night before that it was only a week until my mother’s birthday. AND I had to set up automatic rent payments, although all three boys seem to be paying me in cash, and not the right amounts at that. God that sounds dodgy. Oh well.

So yeah, I did all that fun stuff at the bank, then I bought Mum some perfume and face stuff from the body shop. I think the perfume was called “Leaping” or something, and it’s really nice, so you can buy me some if you like. Then I found her a photo frame which I can put the photo below in.

anji has very nice breasts

Me, Anji and Karen. Feel free to admire her breasts. I do.

Speaking of breasts, a stranger sent me hers! Yay! So they’re up on the breast page. That was really exciting. PLUS yesterday, I got the whole Frozen Lake mess sorted out, so I’ve been acknowledged as an inspiration for a very similar story published on Reckoning.net. So that’s choice too.

Back at home, um, I didn’t do much. Tried to nap a little, only they were mowing the lawns next door. My bed still wasn’t delivered, but in anticipation of it, I created an advertisment and application form for it. Thanks to Annette cos I stole her code. Go ahead, share my bed.

hahahahah that’s traj, but oh well. I cooked dinner again (fuck, I’m such a good bitch) and Clayton was happy. Possibly he’s getting tired of vegetarian fare, but all the meat we have is sausages and chicken legs, both of which don’t rate highly on my list of things that are cool. He washed the dishes, and did it really badly. I hate people that use luke warm water. When I do them, I only use the hot tap – except in this house because the hot water is too hot, and I don’t know where to adjust it at. Honestly, I have to turn the shower dial to half way between ‘warm’ and ‘cold’. Did that make any sense?

I didn’t have much of a point to the above paragraph. In the evening, I discovered a show called ‘McCallum” starring John Hannah, (4 Weddings and Funeral, Sliding Doors), which, considering my fetish for accents