Speaking of my name, someone came here googling “secret anti joanna mcleod hubris tumblr” – does such a thing exist? I MUST KNOW. And if it doesn’t exist (I couldn’t find it anyway) can someone please start one and give me publishing rights on it too? I’m sure I periodically hate myself much more than anyone else ever could!  Today I was so emo that after I went to dinner at my parents’ house, I drove all the way around the South Coast listening to Placebo.  I think it helped, a little bit.

It’s hard, because it’s been over a month, and I am still very… uncomfortable. That’s a word I could use. It’s a word to describe the intense panicky heartrate and fight reactions I had at the dentist, and also today a little whilst being scanned. It’s a word to describe how things are when paths occasionally cross, and it’s definitely the word to describe how my friends appear to be when I talk about it. Because of course they’re bored of it, of my not being over it, and how I will reference it in casual conversation, and they don’t know how to react or what to do about it. It’s how I feel because I would like to confront it, because that’s my preferred way of dealing with things, but uncomfortable was the reaction of someone else who would rather just forget it. And meanwhile I wonder what the implications are for my future, how I will deal with other people when they get around to touching me.

Oh and of course, me being me, that’s not at all the only drama in my life, because of course I make things way too complicated and stupid and dumb. And I’m so busy right now, there’s pretty much not an empty day in my calendar until March. That’s good for my #11in’11 challenges, but not so good for the noise in my head, if I can’t sleep because I’m trying to figure out what to wear to all these millions of social events, and how I will function at all of them, and also wondering why people would want to see me when I’m just going to get drunk and insult them. And then when I do sleep, I dream about apocalypses. Speaking of which, I guess it’s that time again right now.

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.

***

Change your belief or change your action. Because I am tired of being unemployed, I started referring to myself as a freelancer instead. Then I realised that actually, I am, so I’ve started my own business doing content-writing and online media advice. It’s called So Content. I have business cards and mentors and many meetings. I feel productive and talented, it’s good.

***

Change your belief or change your action. I lost my shit at Mum the other night in front of my aunt and cousins when she kept making jokes at me about her friend who assaulted me when I was 12. She said it never happened. I yelled and stormed out. She came running out to apologise. I wish the It’s Not Okay phrase had been around then.

***

Other things? I dunno. I’m going to see a gynecologist in October to deal with how much I lose my shit in the week before my period. Immoral Terrace continues to be a refuge for people in need which I love. There’s a prom coming up on Friday at 361, and I need a date. Any volunteers? I had a lovely party the other weekend, which was great. This week is going to be insanely busy with meetings and friends and the food show and secret intrigues and networking and going on a roadtrip to Wanganui on Saturday. I’ve set a date for my 30th, it’s going to be TripleX-themed, and it’s on June 26. Come along!

***

Job hunting continues to happen. I got feedback from one interview that I went to along the lines of “We thought you were fantastic. You blew us away. As soon as you left the room, we were all like ‘oh man, we wish we had a job for her!’ ” . I am considering being slightly less awesome  in my next interview in order to avoid this happening again. Then again, the contract work that I am doing right now (at which I am kicking ass and taking names) is the result of a similar result from another job interview, so perhaps there is hope for me yet. And next week I will get paid by the government to help my mother cook dinner, so that’s always good (Serious Entertainment Function hosted by my father. It’s like the ’80s and the ’90s diplomatic life all over again).

So that’s the work front. On the home front, while I’m still looking for one flatmate, Thigh Voltage moved in yesterday and we had hilarious hijinks trying to mandangle a four-seater couch up our very steep and narrow stairs and through our tight hallway. Later that night Anna Jane gave me a neck massage and went “oh you’re so tight!” like a pornstar. I giggled a lot. I recommend her massage services, by the way. Chiara and Rachel plaited my hair like I was a My Little Pony. We were tiki-shacking it up to welcome Thigh. My house was full of my lovely friends and the glorious roller derby girls and other people who read twitter or something. I had hilarious gossips with Kim and Laura and Lisa in the tiki shack (we were mostly in the house because of the wind). My catchphrase this weekend has been “I drink a lot and I have low self esteem!” It goes a long way in explaining many things about me. However, the compliments from the roller derby girls about my creepy fandom and also of my boobs (I wore a low-cut dress to make up for not providing much food or drink, you see) went a long way to boosting up my ego to sky high levels. I have been reminded of the fact that the reason I have so many awesome people in my life is because I am actually pretty damn awesome.

Other things of note recently:

• the meal Bambi cooked for me while I was crying on Anji’s shoulder
• how after I cleaned the fridge out I discovered the only food actually in it was some creamed corn
• the hammering I did when Shirley repaired her (stolen) park bench
• dinner with Megan and Laura at Thai Chef
• discovering that apparently people a couple of years younger than me don’t use condoms every single time that they have sex (WTF? How is that possible???? I have had sex without a condom a grand total of twice in my entire life, and I was on the pill and thought I was in a monogamous relationship. There are some things I don’t fuck around with, you may be surprised to learn).
• the insane amount of spirits that we got through last night. So many empty bottles.
• eating Ethiopian food for the first time
• The things filling up my social calendar – gallery openings, book launches, Skate Highway One – Wellington vs Auckland at Roller Derby,  the FOURTH ANNUAL WELLINGTONISTA AWARDS OMG etc.

And now some multimedia stuff:

Me winning the best sign competition at the last bout of Roller Derby with this gem which encourages world peace, because obviously I’m dressed to support SMASH MALICE who won, but also the new flatmate who’s on Brutal Pageant:

Photo by Jed Soane

Bad Tom teaching Chiara how to tie a cravat before Pride & Prejudice & Zombies:

That might be it for now, actually. Leave me a comment, I haven’t updated for a while so give me a reason to be a woman do it more often!

Let me start with pictures of cupcakes. The lovely Emma came over to lend me her neat handwriting expertise, and together we assembled these beauties:

If you click the photo, you’ll get to my flickr page where I’ve tagged each cupcake with what it says

We had a tremendous amount of fun coming up with the dirty words and I also got to say to her things like “give me an orgasm” and “I love your meat flaps” which is always a guarantee of a good time. The cupcakes were for Bad Tom’s Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know party, which we will get to in time, but first I have to talk about #opengovt.

On Saturday I went to an Open Government Bar Camp, because I am a big nerd. In order to appear less governmenty, I wore really bright-coloured clothing:

I am so in love with my new tights from welovecolors.com, although I think the footless ones fit better than the footed ones. I’m pretty sure I am going to need to order them in more colours than just kelly green, scarlet red and fuschia at some stage. Anyways. Bar Camp. I knew a tremendous amount of people there, and even more people knew me. I tried to remind people that we weren’t entirely representative of the rest of New Zealand in that normal people don’t tend to spend sunny Saturdays cooped up in the National Library of their own free will, and I think I did quite well at that. I also ate some really tasty proscuitto. I will write about it more on my portfolio site sometime soon, probably. My social media expertise was paid for by drinks at the Loaded Hog afterward where the bar man kept giving me over-pours, probably because I was one of very few women there.

But I couldn’t stay and drink free booze all night there, because I had a party to get to. So I jumped in a taxi and went up to Karen’s house in order to get dressed up, meet Chiara and have more drinks. This is what Karen and I dressed up as:

If that’s unclear to you, click here for the reveal.

Bambi and Anji also dressed up as Bad Tom, who was suitably impressed and perplexed. I put a naughty schoolgirl spin on my outfit, which proved to be quite handy, not least because the amount of Mary-Kate & Ashley available enabled people (well, maybe just Tom) to do lines of snuff off my breasts.

Photo stolen from Bad Tom’s flickr.

Did I mention that there was homemade laudanum? And absinthe? And a general all around dirty atmosphere? Here are some more pics to show off the mood in the room:

I like it how it appears that Chiara is about to give me a lapdance in this photo, but she didn’t actually. I did watch her and Anna Jane shake and shimmy and undulate in the hallway. There was kissing booth malarky. I also pashed a drag queen named Candy. At one stage I found myself on Tom’s crazy comfy bed with a cute girl and a guy I used to work with. We spilled absinthe on his sheets and tried to shut the door but people kept walking in on us. It is somewhat disconcerting to be making out with someones while your sister stares at you through the window. Still, I got to tell the guy that I’d wanted to fuck him because I thought he was kind of misogynistic, so that was amusing, although he protested that he wasn’t. And then later on the cute girl and I went home with the duck. It was somewhat of a strange night, and I am paying for it now with a cut-open thumb from cocktail making, and bruised knees from god knows what. Ahh debauchary, how glad I am you are in my life.

I also had amazing gnocchi at Baobob, great homemade pizza at Lisa Fur’s, and some of the ‘Welcome Home El’ cake that I made. More tasty things in my mouth. Oh, and I had the joy of disposing of what Sebastian wanted to eat – a rat he brought in the window at 4am and was eating under my bed. I picked it up through a plastic bag, but it was warm, and may have squirmed, and I panicked and threw it out the window. Had the rat still been alive, that would have been probably the most humane thing to do anyway. Yucky.

A much more pleasant thing that happened to me this week was on Saturday when I was at Anna Jane’s she decided that she was going to give me a foot rub, and so while she was doing that I said to Phillip “you can give me a scalp massage while she’s doing that” and he actually did. I felt like a pampered princess making ‘o’ faces fit for a tabloid magazine.

And speaking of pleasant things, after she had watch me paint over dolphins (long story) tonight, Lisa and I watched Singles for like, the millionth time. I’m still in love with Campbell Scott, even if he does resemble Campbell Smith, minus the chambray shirt. I miss Jessie. Just as well that she, like KateH, are making home visits sometime this year then, huh?

Okay, so here are the things that I want to do tomorrow:

1. Decide what I’m cooking for dinner, and go to Moore Wilson’s to purchase ingredients.
2. Go to the Warehouse to look for part of my madbad costume
3. Finish the thing I was painting tonight
4. Do two loads of laundry if it’s sunny
5. Tidy my bedroom a little.
6. Cook, mull wine, enjoy the company of my friends.

That’s all achieveable too, right? Right?

On Monday night we had a flat dinner and I made a fucking awesome roast beef. Then because Bart had found a video that his social group had traded around themselves in 1996, I undid all the feminist thinking that I’d been doing since a post by Tze Ming on Public Address made me realise that I need to do more to reinforce feminist thought – so I bought Bitch magazine – by watching German porn with the boys while Lani did the dishes. It was amusing but also really sad. There was a woman dancing in the video who had breast implants the size of her head, and she just looked like a freak. I know that there are some porn stars who make a lot of money and have a lot of power in the industry, but this woman didn’t seem to be one of them. She was just an object of ridicule and that made me really sad.

On a more upbeat note, Bowling League on Tuesdays is still fun. Surprisingly, I don’t think that the Bowlingtonista are going to win the league, but damn we’re pretty. And it’s so much fun to get to hang out with BFF Martha while the men do the hard work.

On Wednesday I went to a wine night at the boatshed called ‘Meet Your Maker’. There were stalls there from various “unique and boutique” winemakers from the Wairarapa, and everything was free to try. I took a series of very detailed notes that included the following dialouge about a Hudson Sav:

Me: it tastes like silver in the mouth
Daddy: No it doesn’t.
Me: Well I think it tastes Metallicy, and Nothing Else Matters.

On Friday night I went home after work and napped on the couch, before driving in to town to pick up Miss Lisa and Karen, and see Jimmy and Miss Jessie at Dimmer. It didn’t feel quite as sexylicious as last time, but when they played the long, thrusting ‘Seed’ I still wanted to touch myself inappropriately, but settled for stroking myself behind my ears, as that is somewhat less inappropriate.

Saturday was a very amusing night. I had drinks at home with Lani and her friend Nikki who is staying, and then we went to a party in Kelburn. Nikki and I amused ourselves taking photos with someone else’s camera that had be left lying on the TV. Then I spilt red wine on the carpet so we ran away and I watched very guiltily as someone else cleaned it up. I am not normally the type of person who doesn’t clean up after themselves, but I was all like “they’ve got a white carpet! It’s their fault! Everyone always spills stuff on MY carpet…” So of course I was unimpressed with myself for that crappy attitude, and when I found myself in a bathroom queue with the girl who’d cleaned it up I apologised and confessed. She came up to me later to say it was awesome of me to confess, and so Nikki and Lani decided that she was a lesbian and was totally in to me. I was like “ummm, I don’t get that vibe at all”, but I think we all know that I have little to no female gaydar. I still went and tried to talk to her later (because if she was a lesbian obviously she’d fancy me, right?) but I was saved from myself by the need to take photos with someone dressed as a reindeer. Then we went into town, and despite all my protestations, I found myself at Coyote. Shudder. I hate Courtenay Place on weekend nights, I really do. The music was bad, the crowd was bad, and yet I stayed and constantly had a drink in my hand, and I’m not sure how that happened. At one stage a guy came up to me and was all “oh, you are so beautiful, can I get a kiss?” and I was like huh? But I gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he turned his head and asked for another one, so I did, but then he was going to go for a pash, and I was like “hey buddy, you know nothing about me! You don’t know my hobbies or my interests, how can you want to kiss me?” and he was like “what?” and I was all “I mean, for all you know, I could be a member of the Hitler Youth” and he was like “I don’t know what that is” and I was like “I’m a white supremicist!” and he ran away and I laughed and laughed and laughed. And felt like Lily Allen. “I’ve got herpes!” Because after all, my Matariki resolution (along with doing something that will earn me a slow clap) is to wake up with someone and want them to be there, and sifty guys in sifty bars will not help me accomplish that. After that we finally left Coyote for the best kebabs EVAH from Hadi Gari, and then people were going to queue to get into GoGo and I was like “umm, nahuh, there is no way I’m going to wait to get into that crappy place” so I went home with Lani.

Yesterday I got up half an hour before my family were due for an afternoon tea to break in my cake-plate. It was so very civilised! I provided mini afghans and feta & spinach savouries, Mummy & Daddy baked mini scones and brought cream & jam, Anji brought coffee and shortbread, and Karen made chicken, almond and watercress sandwiches. We used fancy china and a good time was had by all. And we also finalised our plans to go to Rarotonga for Daddy’s 60th birthday and now Mum’s booked the flights. Because my job doesn’t finish until June 29, I’m going a week later than them all, and am consequently paying significantly more for the flights, damn it all. But still, Rarotonga, hurrah! We’re hopefully renting a four-bedroom house with a pool as well, so that should be nice.

Tonight instead of doing the whole flat dinner thing, which I really can’t afford to produce any more, I’m just going to make dessert crepes so we can eat the maple syrup that Lani brought back from Canadia. What’s that all aboot eh?

Luckily I have a darling friend who carries her camera almost everywhere with her, so I can steal her photos and say “this is what I was doing around midnight on Friday night”:
.

Yes, that’s right, I was encouraging boys to jump off the plank with me. Lisa also took a photo of me, but come on, you think I’m going to put a photo of me in my togs online when it’s quite possibly the least flattering but most awesome shot ever? I even jumped off the plank a second time in order to facilitate that photo, because it turned out the tide was high enough that the bottom rung of the ladder was under water so I could actually climb out and back up again. Lisa made a new friend while Dyl and I swam, in the form of some random emo guy who wandered down to the lower dock where she was and stood there smoking cigarettes, it was a little strange.

Earlier we’d been at Tupelo, and there was a boy who rubbed me up the wrong way with some of his comments about how when he found out a guy at his work was gay he was very not keen to go to the bathroom at the same time. I was like “Do you think I’m hitting on you right now?” and he was like “Huh?” and I was like, “well, I like boys, so obviously I want to fuck you right now, right?” and my friend started cracking up because he could see that his friend was going to dig himself deeper and deeper. I was kind of bored, so I really dived right in with the logic. He tried to excuse himself with a “but in the bathroom there are penises” and I was all “well I like girls but when I’m at the gym, I’m not all “oooh I can see your vagina, I am so aroused right now”" and he tried the “well after I found out I still talked to him, I still invited him to parties” and I was like “OH MY GOD! i take it all back. You found out he was gay and yet you still treated him like a human being. You deserve a fucking medal, buddy”. Then Dave started playing porn on his laptop and when I got up, I leant on the far end of the table, and the other end came flying up and beer went all over his lap, and so he ran away. I would feel worse about it, because I really really hadn’t meant to spill the beer – but the total and utter glee and smiles on Lisa’s face when she came into the bathroom to high-five me made me so happy that I don’t feel as bad about it as I should. My other lesson from the night is that you shouldn’t let the new waitress at Harem try to make you cocktails because they will taste like Raro.

I was going to make Saturday Jo Day, but then I had leftover pizza to eat from Wednesday and Scar tissue to read (I’m no RHCP fan, but you know how I do so love the rockstar bio), so I didn’t go out for brunch. Instead, because Lani’s golf game got cancelled, I went out to PIRATE MINI GOLF with her since it was such a gorgeous day. We thought about waking up Smoo to make him come with us, but I don’t think he would have appreciated that. I ended up beating Lani by two points, because I got a hole-in-one on the second-to-last hole which she took six to get. Hurrah! I took lots of photos, but on my disposable camera, which is weeeeeeeeeeeeird because you can’t see what you’re doing! It’s like, all random luck! Strange! It was like using a rotary telephone. Then we went to Kaizen at Pataka Museum for coffee, and planned out our herb garden. But it was so fucking hot that we went to Lyall Bay instead of the garden centre, and I floated on the very very calm ocean until I touched a jellyfish and felt icky.

Back at home we decided to have a blind tasting session of the four kinds of Coruba Gold RTDs that I’d received a coupon for in the mail (see, there are some rewards for suggesting the most awesome Pirate Party that $50,000 would buy even if you didn’t get anyone to vote for it). The ginger ale was the most drinkable, and the energy drink was disguuuuuuuuuusting. But we wrote very wanky wine-style notes on each, which I’d replicate here if it didn’t involve getting up to find the piece of paper. As Lani got drunker, she became more and more convinced that Coruba should hire us to work for them. She also became more and more Adam Ant that we needed to play Cluedo. Since there were only two of us, because we’d ascertained that Smoo wasn’t actually still sleeping, we couldkn’t play her new video version, but at her insistence I slipped the magnetic travel version into my handbag when we set off for a party on Webb st her workmate was having.

I didn’t find the party very interesting, but there was very tasty caramel slice. Lani tried to pressgang everyone into playing Cluedo, and eventually we found a couple of willing Americans. Turns out it was Mrs. Peacock in the lounge with the dagger. Who knew? Lani did. We left the party, and debated going to Havana, but decided that what we really wanted to do was go home and have an encore of dinner (spaghetti with garlic, chilli and parsley) and watch Buffy. I should stress that it was her idea, not mine!

Today I woke up at 10.30am and spent two hours finishing off Scar Tissue before heading in to town for a slightly disappointing brunch at Ernesto consisting of fennel & carrot gluten-free toast, hash browns, bacon, mushrooms and black beans. I had to ask for butter for the toast, the hash browns were a little gluggy and the beans weren’t all that warm, but the coffee was great. I know they can do better, so hopefully it was just a once-off kitchen lapse. Then I went to Plastic Box (heh) for crates to tidy up our hallway with, and ended up spending $100 on a CD rack. But it is the KING of CD racks, let me assure you. It’s more like a full-on bookshelf. All my CDs will fit on it, and they’ll look all pretty and neat rahter than being scattered around in various vessels as they are now, and there’s room to grow, and oh, I just know that if my CDs are all neat and ordered and arranged to perfection then people will like me better and I will regain the control over my life that I felt has slipped a bit this week. And so of course then I went to Real Groovy to spend some vouchers. I was very very tempted to buy The Gossip, partly because of the awesomeness of the cover artwork, and partly because I like to think that I look like Beth Ditto does in the ‘Standing in the way of control’ video when I’m dancing, although I’m sure I don’t. But in the end, I got what I’d gone in for – the new Bloc Party, and the Cold War Kids, and also I found a really cheap American Music Club, all on CD and not vinyl, for a change. And I asked at the counter after the new Arcade Fire, and they told me how awesome it was and then ran all over the shop trying to find it, and eventually they did, and I was like, hurrah!

I was supposed to go to the garden centre with Lani then, but I felt very very Uggggggggh all of a sudden, so I ran (drove) to the ocean instead to try and shake it out. Lyall Bay was very shallow today, but the waves were big (and filled with black-legged jellyfish, dammit) so I got some good dunks. Then I floated for a while and eventually realised I was out of my depth and paniced briefly, and swam against the current back to where I could stand. That actually made me happy, that the survival instinct still kicked in even though the noise in my head was rising up and up and up and I don’t know why. I mean yes, I’m mango like crazy so surely I will bleed soon, and there’d been an unsettling email thing that’s been all sorted out now, and I realised that I hadn’t taken my pill, but bleh, not fun. So it was nice to come home and sit on the front steps with Lani and trim back old herbs and hope that they’ll grow and grow and grow. We’ve talked about starting a worm farm too. I kind of wonder why she’s so happy to make so many plans with me, like what do I have to offer her as a friend, and I’m thinking that about other people too, why do they put up with me, what can i do for them, and so on and so forth. This is also about how I haven’t been to counselling in almost three weeks, and so I haven’t sat down and provided clear examples (it’s the essay writer in me) of ways that I make other people feel good. But I can think of some of them, honest. Drinking two nights in a row – even if I didn’t get drunk (there’s that Citalapram drink tolerance kicking in) is not a good idea, I suspect.

Anyways, onwards and upwards. Tomorrow I’m cooking a roast and we’re having people over for DVD Cluedo. On the weekend I’m going away for a romantic weekend with my parents (insert hand/fist slapping motion here, suggesting that the family who lays together stays together), and then the weekend after that is a Wellingtonista get-together with secret plans and clever tricks. And somewhere in between I might get to clean the house. Maybe. OooH! I think Lani has tennis on Tuesday night and Smoo’ll probably be working so that’ll be clean time for me. What a thing to get excited about…

Edit: I must also add that right after I saw Rockstar: Supernova’s new ‘Head Spin’ video on TV (and Gilby’s guitar-playing sucks more than the original), I got a text from Annabel telling me that she just saw Lukas having his hair cut in Newmarket. Hahaha! Awesome.

Wednesday
I flew up on Wednesday 12 July in the afternoon. My shuttle picked me up way too early and my flight got delayed so I can happily report back that Wellington Airport, while better-looking than Auckland, is incredibly boring. Still, finding a $25 Whitcholls voucher to spend on magazines is nice. One of these days, I really must get myself a subscription to Q since it’s the only magazine that I read which I totally respect. I mean, apart from Pulp, of course, but I hear the music reviewer for that genuinely likes the Spice Girls, so what would she know? I was staying at the Comfort Inn again, this time in a one bedroom suite that captured all the afternoon sun, so that sucker was hot. Crazy Aucklanders thinking that they’re in winter when they so aren’t, everyone’s heater was turned up way too high. The suite didn’t have a bath, unfortunately, but the shower was oh-my-stars-I-think-my-scalp-is-being-caressed-by-angels strong. And it’s always nice when no one has written on the walls of the bathroom in their own blood (Smoo is so fucking feral. That’s not part of my Auckland story, but seriously, who the fuck does that? Bart cleaned it up for me when I expressed my total and utter disgust. I wish I’d taken a photo first, because it was actually kind of funny).

First up on my Auckland agenda was meeting Annabel for a drink up at the Odeon. I hadn’t seen her since 2001, but we’ve had many an online conversation since then so it didn’t seem too unnatural. Once the Odeon started giving us the dirty “We’re closing. Get the fuck out now” eye, we went over the road for another drink at Galbraiths, and I decided that I should platonically set her up with Heather, since they live near by each other and have a lot in common.

After that, it was back to my room to try and get a nap in before the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Holy crap that gig was overflowing with gaxys and hipsters! I’m pretty sure that every tight pair of black jeans, little op shop dress and Karen O haircut was in attendance. Drunkenly. And noisily. Holy crap there are few things I hate more than drunk 18 year old girls. I don’t understand why the fuck someone would pay over $60 for a concert ticket and talk the whole way through it. I had to restrain myself from punching people. I should have moved away, but as I was feeling so very old – I arrived while the Mint Chicks were playing and instantly cursed myself for forgetting ear plugs -, I was standing at the back behind the padded barrier and laughing at people who tried to walk through it. And wishing that I was Karen O, of course. I liked it when she screamed, because all the stupid bitches shut up for half a minute. They played songs I didn’t know, and drew out the beginnings to many things, and she writhed around under pieces of shiny material. I waved my fist in the air for ‘Phenomena’ and the long-intro’d ‘Y Control’ and got teary when they came back for their encore with ‘Maps’. I also spent a lot of time thinking about other gigs I’d been to at the St James, including the Roni Size gig where I took e for the first time, and the True Colours gig when I didn’t realise I was going to fall for the boy I’d just left sleeping. Afterwards I thought about taking the bus back up the hill but I couldn’t stand the gaxys anymore so I taxied back up for more glorious showers, even though my feeling-oldness had kept my moshing and therefore my sweatiness to a bare minimum. Man, no wonder it takes me so long to write these kinds of entries, I go way too overboard with details. Nevermind.

Thursday
The next morning I had brunch at Benediction with Elisabeth from Pulp and this time I successfully managed to keep from calling her Carla even a little bit. She said nice things about my reviews, which is always pleasant to hear (who’d have thought that good feedback would be like, good? Woah Jo, you’re out of CONTROL), and loaded me up with many more CDs, including the new Muse, which made me squee with joy. But on the inside of course, because I was pretending to be a cool Aucklander. A cool Aucklander who was nevertheless very impressed when the electronic bus timetables on K’Road proved to be quite accurate. I headed off to Grey Lynn to meet up with Jessie, and so I got to see her very posh offices. Then we went for lunch at Delicious, because I’ve always heard good things about it. Holy fucking crap, that place is delicious. We had bruschetta, and then I had roast beetroot ravioli with smoked ricotta, and every mouthful was like a thousand orgasms. We lingered long over it, and then gave the dessert cabinet the glad eye. After some quick agonisations, we decided to share a piece of pistachio praline chocolate ‘cake’, on the grounds that while their tiramisu also looked amazing, it was more common. The cake was pretty much like tiramisu anyway, with the added bonus of pistachios. Wow. It was like dying and being brought back to life and being fed really fucking awesome sweet desserty treats, without having to die and be brought back to life. My similes are fucking rocking today, I must add.

She dropped me off at Real Groovy so that I could cash in $50 worth of booksellers’ tokens on records: You are free by Cat Power, Funeral by the Arcade Fire, and most exciting of all, Horses by Patti Smith, which was the reason I bought a record player in the first place (now I can totally satisfy all my own fantasies – well as far as sitting on the floor playing myself Patti Smith records goes, anyway. Although my record player is a little too high up in order to do that comfortably. Perhaps I should rearrange my room). Of course I ended up having to spend twice as much as I had in tokens, and the same thing happened in Farmers when I was using vouchers to buy more foundation and also lip gloss because goddamit, I haven’t bought any in a very long time, thank you very much, and no I don’t have an addiction, fuck you. Then I went up to Rakinos to meet Sam for a coffee. Well, I had wine, he had water, and he talked a lot about sales techniques. It made me laugh.

After that it was back to my hotel to be incredibly disturbed by Juice TV (why oh why did anyone let Panic! At the Disco record a song that contains a line “haven’t you people heard of closing the goddam door?” in such dreaful all over the place timing? Their phrasing is like a thousand times worse than the Manic Street Preachers or Silverchair, and that’s saying a lot. Not to mention emo as fuck. I wish my hair was emo so that it’d cut itself. Heh), read, and nap some more. I love holidays with their rich nappy goodness. Around 7.30, I headed off to Annabel’s house where I had arranged to meet Heather before our dinner. This meant I got to meet Elton, which was very choice, and the girls got to meet each other too, instead of just stalking online. We had wine and watched Rockstar and Heather and I were having such a good time we asked if it wouldn’t be too weird if we got our food and ate it there. Annabel pulled out a folder of menus, so we took that as a sign, and Heather went and fetched us Meekong. Mmmmmmoney bags. Mmmmmmmmmmm so much tofu. Mmmmmmmmm goodness. Thanks for dinner Heather – it was an awesome birthday present. Eventually though we had to tear ourselves away as we were due to meet KateH at Match Bar to watch Sam play.

Sam had said that Match has a crappy crowd, but myyyyy god I hate the rich white trash even more than I hate the faux emo gaxys. Not that I judge people on sight or anything, but why the hell are you bothering to order Moet by the bottle when you’re so drunk that you break your glass every time you go outside for a cigarette? We were sitting close to the doors and counting broken glasses, and there were at least eight over the course of the night – from a fairly small crowd. Some of the guys got so drunk that they had to be carried down the stairs. Not pretty. It was lovely to catch up with KateH. We sat and talked for a long long time in egg shaped chairs, and then once they were done playing we went to Denny’s with Sam once he was done trying to get KateH to buy in to his pyramid scheme. By that stage it was after 3am (Did they play ’3am’? I’m pretty sure there was at least one Matchbox 20 cover. Ahh covers, good times. KateH and I laughed and laughed and laughed) and Auckland was drowning in mist. You couldn’t see the Sky Tower, or even more than ten metres in front of you. It was fucking excellent. So pretty and spooky (*).

Friday
Friday had been booked in as Heather’s and my Cultural Day, but I was feeling a little sloooooooow because I’d got to bed after 5am. I met her up at Altezzano and nearly fell flat on my face a couple of times. That whole walking thing is kind of tricky sometimes. We decided that the counter food on offer was not enough for people who’d had salty $18 tequilla cocktails the night before and so we made our way down to Galbraiths. It was about 11.45 at that stage, and Galbraiths was shut. Oh the horror! We needed our greasy NOW! Or rather THEN! Instead we strolled down to the House of Knives to browse amongst the shiny objects (but not the Shiny), having our minds boggled trying to figure out who would own a $1600 knife block. I mean, yes, good kitchen knives are important, and I’m gutted that Horrible Jonny stole my chef’s knife from the famous samurai sword village, and I wish that Del had gotten around to steeling my current knife before Bart broke up with her, but $1600? Woah. We strolled back up to Galbraiths and joined the throngs – and there were throngs – who were also doomed to waiting outside because it was late in opening, but eventually we made it in, ordered large plates of meat, and took our beers out to the back garden. The last time I was in the garden there, it was my last day of work at the Med School and I flashed my cow-orker so that I could win our staring match. The time before that was before the Placebo concert which is a whole diferent era of life (dates! and bedding! and being asked to be someone’s girlfriend!), and boy, Auckland sure likes to stir up the memories huh? It was a gorgeous day. I rolled up the sleeves of my long sleeved tshirt as we basked in the sun and the beer made me come up with the funniest/stupidest joke I’ve come up with in a while:

Q. What’s that noise coming from the BeeGees’ herb garden?
A. It’s just the chives talking.

Ha ha. Heather had chives on her shanks, obviously. Obbbbbbbbbviously. Our master plan called for us to be going to the museum right about then, but we weren’t sure if we could be bothered walking all the way to the domain from where we were at, since we were between two kinds of public transport that could have gotten us there, but then I had the genius idea of busing down to the art gallery and taking a link from there afterwards. Of course, my genius didn’t actually extend to remembering that the 27*s don’t go down Wellesley St, and so we got off on Symonds St and went for a very big long walk down and around Albert Park (and of course on the bus on the way home we realised that if we’d stayed on the bus we could have avoided that). Still, gorgeous day and walking is good for you. The fact that my feet had been screaming at me since Wednesday was irrelevant. I like the quiet echo of the art gallery, and I’m awed by the fact that they have stuff that’s almost a thousand years old, but there were no new exhibits in the old gallery, and then by the time we were done with that, our feet were too sore for the new gallery. We had coffee on the pretty terrace up amongst the trees away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and decided to call it a day then.

More nap, more Juice TV, some vodka purchasing, and then Jessie came over for a drink. She found me in my pyjamas, because they are pale pink with skull & crossbones on them, and what is more awesome than that? Pretty much nothing. Except for italics. We had a bit of a goss, and then cabbed it up to K’Road where my darling social secretary KateH had arranged an AUT dinner for me at Saigon. I even have photos of it, see?:

Brad, who was up in Auckland to shoot a short film for his course, Shirley who was off to Europe the next day, and Nigel who was still flush from winning
48 Hours and you can view his movie here

Andrew-from-Hamilton, KateH. Not pictured: KateH’s friend whose name I can’t remember. Or me.

I think the woman at Saigon was a little bit in love with me. She kept touching me. Maybe that’s just because – as usual – I played The Dominator and chose all our food. Mostly I did really well too. The noodles were a bit unnecessary.

After dinner, we went to The Musket Room in Ponsnobby. It was pretty crowded, but we managed to find ourselves a table and Brad ate one of the mozarella balls that they brought to our table, thinking that they were complimentary, until we got kicked out of that room because apparently it was a private function. We managed to find ourselves a big table though, and Clayton showed up, hurrah!

Shirley, leaving the next day. Clayton, not hating my guts.

We had some good talks about his career, and he’s doing all these amazing things which is awesome. I also invited him to Amy’s Pirates & Cheerleaders party for the next day, because he’s always loved of the young girls. I think Brad’d had a few drinks too because he gave me a big talk on what an awesome writer I am, and blah blah blah. I say blah blah blah not because it’s ever boring hearing about how awesome I am, but rather because I’d had a drink or two myself, and so I can’t remember all the correct wording, rather just the sentiment behind it. I really liked the Musket Room, apart from the private function kerfuffle and a few girls who were a bit too foolishly dressed (White summer dresses? Really? Sienna fucking Miller called to say you look ridiculous). They were playing ‘Fascination Street’ when we arrived, and then the music mix continued to be really electic, with lots of new wave and also indie and general goodness. Plus it was so dark that I had to read the cocktail menu by the light of an obliging young man’s cellphone. But all good things come to an end, and I found myself back at the hotel watching O.C reruns before I knew it.

Saturday

Jessie and Heather came to get me at some ungodly hour of the morning, and we set off for the French food markets somewhere in Parnhell. Jessie’s magnificant parallel parking skills came in handy, and I nearly died queuing for ages in an incredibly busy cafe to get pretty dreadful coffee, but once I had the cup in my hands, and a couple of quick wine tastings, things were much much better. We tried a multitude of tasty tasty things, talked to scensters and finally settled down with big containers full of hot gnochi. Gnoochi? I can’t spell. But I can eat. Oh boy can I eat. I can also take pictures, although Jessie doesn’t like to be on the internet, so I will show you a picture of Heather instead, because she never complains:

I did mention that it was early morning, right?

I can’t remember what I did on Saturday afternoon. I must have done something, right? Oh yeah, I went and camped out at Benediction again and read their magazines and drank their much better coffee. Heather had said that she’d come to Amy’s party with me, because I didn’t think I’d know many people, but then she wavered, so I promised to pay for the taxis and buy her vodka, and that we’d only have to stay an hour if it was terrible (although I knew it wouldn’t be) and so she duly showed up at my hotel to do semi shots of Russian Cocaine with me (licks of instant coffee, shots of vanilla vodka and then licks of sugar not off a lemon since we didn’t have any), lace me up and take photos of me dressed up as a pirate:

Mary-Kate, me, Ashley trying to escape

We cabbed out to Amy’s (“Give me an ARRRRRRRRRRRR”), found our way down an impossibly long driveway, and much red pirate punch and good times were had. I got to talk to JSR and Annette lots, and Amy had three costume changes. Her speeches were done in the form of “I have never”, personalised specifically to embarrass her, which was fantastic. I talked to new and interesting people, and Clayton showed up and did the same. And then I KICKED ASS at Singstar. I was undefeated on the night, and achieved my all-time personal best score of 9200 on ‘Material Girl’. Woohaa! Thank you so much for having me Amy, even though I’m sure I overstayed my welcome. I do that a lot.

Sunday

On Sunday the lovely Jessie picked me up so that I could have somewhere to leave my suitcase all day before she took me to the airport, and in exchange I bought her brunch at Deve. Heather popped in to see us so that we could giggle at her gossip, and then she took me to her house where I sat on her bed in the sun, ate home made cookies and dozed a little for a while, before I went down to Occam to catch up with first Penny and then Bopha. Hurray! And then I cabbed to Heather’s to watch the Gilmore Girls and umm, now I really have to wind this up. Flew back in the evening, Anji picked me up. That’s all. I thought I had other bits and pieces to say, but apparently I don’t. I <3 the 09 though.

On Friday, Miss Fur came and joined me and a workmate and an ex workmate for a couple of quiet drinks at the Poon, and that’s not even a euphemism. They really were quiet drinks, and we left by 8pmish to go back to her house to watch my friend Nigel & co win the 48 Hour Film Festival. Haha, now I sound like Russell with the name-dropping to show how down with the kids I am, except that I did actually go to Uni with Nige. You might remember my story of how my 18th birthday party was ruined by him and Brad and Trudie telling me I was dumb for drinking and smoking? Good times. The best part about them winning was that their movie was actually the best. I laughed myself stupid. And then we ummmm watched something else? Listened to records? I’m having a total mind blank.

On Saturday bright and earlyish, I picked up Anji and Karen and we headed up to Ngaio to decorate the house for Daddy’s party. Of course, before we could start decorating, we had to find the house first. My parents have A LOT of crap. We discussed ways in which we could thin it out, perhaps by taking one object every time we go visit and throwing it away. I need their house to become minimalist so that I can raise my brood of four children in it. But eventually we had a Quiet Meadow room as well as a lounge draped ridiculously in mosquito netting and streamers, with paper picket fences taped to the windows and other goodness around. We went home for a quick nap, and then I got all dressed up like a milk maid and returned. Daddy’s friends are weird. They didn’t want our horny monkeys, pink elephants, moscow mules, brown cows and fluffy ducks. They were all about the moderate drinking of wine. Fluffy ducks are crazy-tasting, by the way. Crazy but tasty. I continued to make drinks anyway. And serve our animal-themed food. And laugh when my Mummy kept turning up the stereo and someone kept turning it down. But eventually we had a boogie anyway. Neil’s friends sat on the floor and watched. There were two members of parliament present. Unsurprisingly, the Labour one was nice. The National MP, meanwhile, said to Anji that he didn’t believe OOS was real. Fucking awesome. I can’t wait til everyone in National takes their own advice and moves to Australia. We had some quality family time at the end of the party, and Mum danced like Axl Rose. It was pretty awesome. But I had too much sugar and couldn’t get to sleep for a long time, and when I finally did, right before 5am, I got woken up pretty much straight away by Smoo who didn’t have his key, and then when I went back to sleep after that Sebastian woke me up. Needless to say, I slept in past 2pm on Sunday.

Did I actually do anything else on Sunday? I don’t think I did. Apart from go to see City of God at the private screening, and make a string of hilarious puns about how much phelgm I have (“If I was a painter, I’d be a phelgmish impressionist. If I was a cricketer, I’d be Stephen Phelgming…”). I don’t understand how I’m not already married when I’m this funny and witty. Annnnnnnnnnnd then we got home at 12am from that, and I changed my sheets, and put in some ear drops and finished my Q and all of a sudden it was 2am. How did that happen? Also, I went to listen to The Wall which you will of course remember that Lisa Fur gave me on vinyl, but it appears that Real Groovy fucked up and gave me two sides 3 and 4 instead of a 1 & 2. No one out there wants to trade do they?

TOnight I was supposed to go to Stitch & Bitch that Martha organised, but I found more appealing the thought of coming home to do some amatuer yoga type stretching to follow up on my half-assed effort at the gym today (it was busy! And the first time I’d been in ten days cos of the coughing out my lungs! Give me a break!) and put on my new pale pink with skull & cross bones on pyjamas and watch TV instead. And so that is what I have done. And now I might return to this desperate trash. Now that Jon Safran has finished, I have been somewhat sucked in to Grey’s. Of course, I’m just doing it to bond with Jessie. Naturally.

Stories may come later. What do you want to know?

That’s the whole list. Cheers.

Last night I went to the nzgirl.co.nz party with KateH and KateB – well, I went with KateH as KateB’s date, but they didn’t check invites at the door anyways, which is a good thing because it meant that we could smuggle in La (“hey La, do you want to come to a posh party with free booze?”). It was so very mwah mwah darling. Gay Horrible Jonny was there serving drinks and he was like “hi, mwah, I haven’t seen you in ages” and I was like “oh maybe that’s cos you moved out without giving any notice…” and he was like “this is a party, we’re not going to talk about thsi now”. I wanted to punch him in the face very very much. He could have just poured me another drink and not said anything. I don’t get how people who have burnt their bridges in two cities by making off with half of everyone that they’ve stayed with’s cd collections can not know that oh gee, maybe people aren’t very happy about it. La was like “let it go…” but the thing is that Jonny and I weren’t on bad terms to the best of my knowledge when he moved out, which is what makes it worse. Anyways.

I had about eight glasses of bubbly before that ran out and then I had to switch to beer and god knows how many of those I had. A lot. Right now I am at the lovely KateH’s house but at some stage I will have to go and find my skirt at the boy’s house which I don’t especially want to do. Fuck I hate lecherous taxi drivers. Like, if people are macking it in the back of your cab, sure, watch, but DON’T COMMENT. Fuuuuuuucking hell.

Oh my god, if there’s Carnies in the Tane, then there’s Sheer Total Carnage in Matakana. You have to excuse me if I sound a little rambling or crazy – I have an ear ache and also I was woken at 6.30am so that Andy could get back to Auckland in time to go to church. I kid you not. But we’ll take the narrative back to yesterday, which gives me more time to figure out if I wanna include some things that happened last night that I am very not happy about or not, or if we should just leave that in the “really someone else’s business even though it really shoulda been MY business” basket or not. Did you know that lately I have been all about figuring out which baskets to put things into?

So anyways, since I was informed on Friday that the party was to have a SchoolBoys/Schoolgirls theme I went and bought me a tie, which I paired with my tight black shirt, my denim skirt (which I rolled up at the top to make it shorter), my burgandy maryjanes and some black and white striped socks which I borrowed off Bopha. She put my hair into two bubbles on either side of my head, and I loaded up on blusher, eyeliner and blue eyeshadow. The look I was after was Slutty Schoolgirl, since I have never worn a uniform in my life, and since I was very chaste in high school. Clayton wore his hockey uniform – purple top and short shorts. Mmmm lovely. It felt really weird to be wearing a skirt that ended above my knees, but I was feeling good. I felt even better when I got into Andy’s car and Jody handed me a mizone bottle for the trip filled with vodka lime soda. Ahhhh liquor from water bottles, how very highschool! So yeah, the hour plus drive up to Matakana was really fun, singing along to crazy lionel ritchie mix tapes that Andy had made. It was crazy to go out through the country and drive through Warkworth and everything.

When I got to the party, straight away KateM was like “DID YOU SEE HIM? HE’S HERE!!!” and I was like “no way!” and she was like “he’s totally here” and you’re like “who who who?” and I’m like, *I, of course, the first boy I ever pashed, the one who told me that my hair was choice and who I was in luuuuurve with for a year after we scored, and who i never talked to again. So that was very exciting, and naturally, there were carefully orchestrated trips to the kitchen to try and get a look at him, but I felt like i was being too obvious and felt dumb, so instead I just went into the dining room where they were all playing drinking games and asked what they were playing and was told to pull up a seat. Nice. So we played Musical Instruments, which is like Sexual Connotations, except that, obviously, instead of sexual actions, you play pretend instruments. Eventually, I had to do *I’s instrument, and he was like “right back at you, Jo” and I was all !!!!! oh my god he remembers me! Heheheheh I am such a geek sometimes. But of course, me being me, that nessecitated lots of whispering to Jody and KateM and Clayton in excitement afterwards.

And then there was assorted dancing, and more drinking from the mizone bottle and all that sorta shenanigans, and lots of bonding with Jody, and talking to various people, until at one stage, *I came up to me, and was like “hey, I thought I’d be social” and he said that he remembered Clayton from the Gomez concert (you remember how I bitched that Clay had got to see *I and I hadn’t?) and then Clay took the hint from me and drifted away. He was like “so..” and I was like “wow, you remember me – I’m so impressed” and he was like “yeah, and I wanna apologise for anything wrong that I might have done to you – I’m a lot nicer person now” and I tell you, I just about swooned. He was still really really tall and spunky looking and we chatted for ages and ages. I told him he’d been the first boy I’d pashed and so of course I’d had a crush on him, and he seemed all sorry, and I was like “oh don’t be! you didn’t do anything wrong except not call when you said you would!”. And he apologised again. My god, I know it was like, six and a half years ago, so I’m just totally completely impressed. And just a little smitten again, he was so charming. I told him like my entire work history, and he told me about what he’s been up to, and about Sarah and Dylan and yeah. Eventually he was like “well, I’m going to get a drink” so I was like “it was really cool talking to you” and he’s all like “oh, I’ll talk to you later!” and I was just yeah, a little puddle on the floor. I’m so impressed with my ability to chose well at age 15! Although really, there wasn’t much of a choice. But that’s beside the point.

Anyways, that was definitely the highlight of the party, cos pretty much everything went all downhill from there. It was a very very very very very weird night. Do I want to spill my beef? Yes, okay I will. Because it super super super bugs me. You know Jody, my good friend? The one who was trying to organise to get me to score *I again, cos she knew how much of a crush on him that I used to have, and how much I was lusting after him that night, and blah blah blah? Well, yeah. You can guess what ended up happening. And the goddam house music just didn’t stop. It danced on and on and on and on. And there were some cool things that happened too, but thre were too many weird situations, and I ended up taking herbal sleeping pills and codeiene cos the music just wouldn’t stop and consequently had very fucked up scattered dreams on the couch and then was woken at 6.30am by Andy taking me home. And I’ve lost my denim jacket and that really fucks me off. I tried to sleep in the back seat, still wrapped up in my duvet, but I had to make him stop so I could throw up on the wall of a gated community in Albany. I felt like it was a political statement as well.

I showered and went to bed as soon as I got home, but eventually Bo was being a loud crackwhore cos she didn’t realise I was home, so she woke me up. I went to KateH’s to watch Dawson’s Creek, and then we went to Occam for some excellent food. That’s all.

In which Joanna tries to right all the wrongs in the world

So, this afternoon, Bops and I went to Newmarket. We were looking for a Sony/Aiwa/Pioneer microsystem under $400 with a cd player, cassette and RCA ports looking good for me, and a computer under $2000 for her. I found a Phillips one which the guy in Bond&Bond woulda dropped to $420 for me, so I figured the guy in Noel Lemming since they’re owned by the same company woulda done for me on an Aiwa woulda done for me for the same price, but it was kinda mintgreen tinged, so I’m not sure if I liked it. But we did find Bops a computer for $1700, and managed to talk the shop guy into being able to put less than a 20% deposit on it. I scrapped up $170 outta my account and she had $60 cash. We felt like we was scrounging for coins under the sofa. T has agreed to set us up a network, so I’mma do my best to not piss him off til he’s done that. Hi T, don’t get shirty with me for writign this. Lately I have been having mad flashbacks about all sorts of things, and I have this image of you in my head of you jumping on my bed and hitting your head on my dusty chandelier. That’s all.

Oh, okay, so where were we? Okay, KateH on the phone at 7.40pm, saying let’s meet soemwhere BYO at 8pm, and so we go through the yellow pages togehter and agree to meet at Sri Panang on K’Road so I don’t have to walk down the hill, but once I’ve finally got my shit together, i finally realise I’m on the wrong side’o the road, and when she calls I dunno where she is, so we decide to meet at Saigon instead. So yeah, super yummy Vietnamese for dinner, and then we go home for Martinis. Emma showed up with some crazyass friends, so that was amusing for a while, especially cos she called me really fucking beautiful and you know I pretty much fall for anyone that calls me beautiful – or maybe that’ sjust everyone I’ve fallen for has also called me beautiful.<!– cos you know I always thought Emma was HOT –> Chicken -> egg -> chicken etc. Katie read my list’o memories from Garland (or from the bathroom, laundry, hallway and kitchen, cos that’s only as far as I’ve ever got with those lists) while I got changed and reapplied makeup. She was impressed that I had “There’s a glass of water out here for you Jo” as a memory, cos that’s what she remembered from the bathroom too. That’s all I wrote down, cos what else can you say about a month of throwing up constantly and stressing out all the people that you care about? Especially since she was just “Justin’s Girlfriend” then (sweetei I love you and I don’t even need to say how much more you are now).

Anyways, where was I before I started talking about things that let’s so not go there right now. Oh yeah, Martinis at home, then we went to a party of her friends’, who are also my friends at tech who apparently actually really like me, so I’m so not a Grand Dick, and that’s yay. They were just down Symonds Street, and their party was on the roof of their building. I spent most of the time talking to the editor of Craccum from 2000, and we had astonishingly similar taste in music, and laughed about teh same things, and he was so cool and I was really surprised that apparently he wasn’t gay. It was choice to see where Kelly and Rowena lived as well. And then, we went to a party at Khuja, which was in the private back room so that was excellent, and I had long indepth conversations with assorted people, mostly to accomodate Katie chatting up boys. The boy I was talking to was talking close and whispering in my ear, and I had to whisper in his since the music was really loud, and I was mocking his partial English accent, and I dunno, I just had a real urge to kiss him behind his ears, and the last boy that I felt that for ended up kissing me, but this boy didn’t cos we left to go do sonmethoing else. What did we do? it’/s hard to remember. Drinks at The Supper Club maybe? And then Oporto, and I rang Justin to see where he was at, and he was like “hey, if you wanna hang out, you should call me before 2.46am” which made me laugh lots cos I ahd no idea what the time was cos Katie had had my cellie in her bag all night.

Then we talked about it, as we had been talking about it all night, and had had a big debate before we went into Oporto, but we went into Starks to have a very loud discussion in front of this FUCKING DICK who has done bad things to someone cool and you so don’t do that on our watch without us having to say something, and yeah, so loud obnoxious indignant conversation til we got the “You ladies would be more comfortable in the Civic Lounge” line, and fuck Katie, when i started this evening, I had $75 in my pocket, and now I have $6 for laundry and like $4 in scrapnel. What DID we get up to? Love you SO much baby xojo.

A couple of days ago, Kate H and I took Brad shopping for a new shirt. We were hoping to be able to end up doing a shopping montage scene, ala Pretty Woman, but he wouldn’t try many things on. Eventually though, we did get him a really cool shirt, and so he bought us coffees.

Shirley dropped lollipops all over my bed today when she came in while I was still sleeping. Well, I was half asleep anyways. Justin had been over much much earlier, and he’s kinda hard to sleep through. I made scones, and we had Sunday Lunch, with her and Kate B and Kate M who was still there although Brad was not. I find it very amusing the way Shirley speaks of her man.

I have a crush on yet another boy after dreaming about him. This amuses me greatly too. I’m 13 again, I swear. I also had a rather horrid dream this morning, in which I was a guy, and abused some women rather badly. That was nasty.

I have three papers worth of work to do still in the next two weeks. If you’re looking for me, I’m imagining you’ll find me at tech. I hope I remember to take earphones. You can go here in preperation for my Expo.

The other night, Brad and I went over to Kate Morrison’s to watch “Bringing Out the Dead”. We stood in her kitchen gossiping while Brad cooked himself dinner, and that was fun. The movie made me think about all sorts of weird things. It was really good and really disturbing too. I borrowed a stack of books of her – teenager crap. Remember Paula Danziger? I finished “The Pistachio Prescription” today, and now I have some “Freshman Year” books to read. I like reading crap when I’ve been reading Literature for too long. I still haven’t made much headway into “A suitable boy”. On the way to Kate’s, because Brad’s car has no radio, he named all the songs that he’d heard on Classic Hits that day, and I sang them. On the way back, we sang Song Association. It was Very.

Yesterday I got lost on the Shore, trying to find my way to Penny’s house. Her fiancee and a couple’o navy guys were there, and I felt quite out of place. They probably thought I was a prissy snobby bitch, and maybe they’re right. It was lovely to see Penny though, but I don’t understand how she could let herself be treated like that. I have quite a diverse range of friends, I think.

Last night Kate M came around and had a few drinks with me and Kate B. Later Kate B and I got ready to go out to the Space party that I described in detail. Brad drew the eyes on our foreheads, in wet coloured pencil, and he even drove us too, lovely boy that he is.

Today I spoke to my mother on the phone. She was all grumpy cos she’d rung three times and I hadn’t answered cos I was in bed. Her and Neil are coming up for the expo, and Anji might too, which would be cool. I got her to test my site for me. I really should stop writing and go to bed now. I should have gone a while ago. I’m just feeling really – I dunno. I haven’t said everything that I’ve been up to lately, you know, so I feel like I’m lying to my general public or something. Well, not lying, but just not delivering all the facts. And it’s not that I’m hiding anything, just that I’ve forgotten all the things I meant to say.

Oh yeah, my main reason for this entry was to put in a link to Adbusters. They were in “No Logo” a lot, and I like. I don’t like flies. Why are there flies in my room? Fuck off!

I don’t like fireworks very much

I’m queing for the toilet again and am just about to go in, when Kate B rushes up to me and is like “don’t go to the bathroom, come to the balloon room!!!!”

So she takes my hand and we run down the long shiny silver corridor into the kitchen, people clustered around red cabinets and I notice this hole in the wall. It’s about a metre square, and Kate’s clambering into it from a wooden chair, so I follow her. The hole is a tunnel almost a meter long, and it feels a little bit like Cube so I’m a trifle aprehensive, but the sides of the tunnel are padded with bubble wrap, which is cool. Then I emerge at the other side, surveying this huge room filled with black balloons, lit by some UV light somewhere, and a TV glaring blue in the corner. I slide down onto a leather chair, and dive under the masses of balloons. To my great excitement, I discover the the whole room is paved with mattresses. Kate and I don’t stop laughing for like ten whole minutes. We frolic and play, tossing balloons up in the air or occasionally diving on top of them. I’m pretty tired, so I burrow my way down (the balloons are waist high) and think about how nice it would be to sleep in there. There’s random heads all over the place and I have no idea how many people are under the balloons. There’s a wet patch in one corner which I hope is just a spilt drink. It’s a marvellous place – it reminds me of the ball pits at Rainbow’s End, but updated for the older generation who are out of their minds. I hide for ages, while Kate and her friend fossick around for me, calling out “Jo? Jo? where are you Joanna?” before eventually rising up, scattering balloons everywhere going “RAAAAAAH!”.

But I knew that I couldn’t stay in the balloon room forever, so eventually I surface, and clamber out of the room, still giggling at home cool it was. I wander into the dance room and dance for a while before I decide to go investigate people further. I think that I was looking for the guys wearing Ghostbuster style backpacks, but I didn’t find them. Instead I found myself in another lounge, lit by glowing bubbling columns, where a laptop was hooked up to a projecter, shooting crazy crackling spirally graphics onto a bed sheet pinned to the opposite wall. This room’s playing lighter music so I dance by myself for a bit, before curling up on a couch to stare at the graphics. I’m sorry, I keep cutting in and out of past and present tense, so maybe you should just pretend I’m doing it to be hip. Anyways, so I’m staring at the graphics when in come a couple of people. This girl introduces herself as Rhiannon, and so I have Fleetwood Mac running through my head. She tells me that she was me at the last party, just staring at the screen until it burnt into her eyes, and introduces me to the guy responsible for it. He used to live in the flat – we were in his old bedroom even – but he moved out to move in with his g/f. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to move out of that house, it was so cool. It made @Garland seem inadequate! Rhiannon made me get up and dance again, to some heinously cheesy music, so eventually I wandered off again. I’m not too sure where I went.

Kate kept going through my bag looking for my hipflask, and in return I kept going through her bag after her black cherry lipgloss. Normally, I don’t rate Bodyshop products very much (the shops smell lovely, but I reckon it’s faked, just like the KFC scent), but this s tuff is the complete shit. Anyways. Eventuallly I went back to the Screen room, and was watching, when this guy came in and so I struck up a conversation with him. He was the marketing manager of Durasel – you know, that stuff you put on books. We were talking about flatmates for some reason, and he was like “and you don’t screw the crew” so I blushed, and he was like “no, you didn’t! it’s the golden rule!” and he started yelling at me so I just laughed. Last week i was at lunch with Kate H and Brad, and for some reason I was trying to persuade Brad to give Clayton head (i can’t remember why, but I’m sure there was a really valid reason) and so I was like “come on Brad – the flat that lays together stays together” and then both him and Kate H were staring at me going “umm Joanna” and I was like “yeah okay, shut the fuck up, bad example”. But that was a weird side diversion story.

Actually, I’m getting tired of telling every single little detail of the party. There were some strange pickup lines including “Why haven’t I seen you before – or were you ignoring me?”. I got stalked from room to room by this ugly guy in a singlet. Johnno showed up while I was lying by myself back in the balloon room so I talked to him for a bit, which was neat. I talked to one of the hostesses of the party, a nd found out there were six hundred balloons, all filled off a dive tank. I danced to happy hardcore by myself. The lightswitch in the bathroom was finicky. I will never forget the balloon room. Kate Johnno and I eventually left around about 4, by which time everyone else was gone and they were shutting down. It was brilliant.

“actually I have no urge to travel at all”

See, I have a third eye. I am an alien princess. So is Kate B. Onehunga truely is out of this world. Or at least, the party we just came back from was. Space – the final frontier. And there was shiny stuff all over the walls, silver wallpaper, and UV ceilings, and hosing stuff, and there were fires lit on the lawn, and people letting off fireworks. One room had dancing with smoke machines (i love that smell) and lights and lasers and mirror balls.

I struck up a conversation with the guy sitting next to me, just because he was quiet, and it turns out he was scottish – from Edinburgh even, and Trainspotting was fresh in my mind from reading it, but I manage to not mention it, cos that’d have been dumb. Instead we talk about MY castle – Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Sky. I go inside and dance to trance music, which is lotso fun. I go outside. I go inside. I’m queing for the toilet again and am just about to go in, when Kate B rushes up to me and is like “don’t go to the bathroom, come to the balloon room!!!!”

but I think I really must sleep now, so this story gets finished tomorrow. I wake up in 4 hours to wake up kate b and johnno. Damn her crap alarm clock! “………”

I mean, I hadn’t been THAT drunk, but I wasn’t thinking too straight. After all, it was morning. Like, really early morning. Must have been like 7.30am because Gail said she was going to be leaving then, and that noise probably would have woken me up.

Then I heard my cellie ring at 10.30am, so I had a babble to Clare for a while, trying to fill her in on all the gossip and stuff. So that was cool. It was weird though, cos Heidi sent me an SMS page, and that cut me off with Clare. Bizzare. Nevermind, she rang me back.

Our phone kept on ringing, but every time I refused to answer it, cos I knew it’d probably be for Clayton. And so it was only fair that he got out of bed to take care of it. It was fucking annoying though. I kept drifting in and out of dreams.

But anyways, yeah. The house is such a mess. Simon and I threw out all the empty cans and bottles, and took stock of what we’d been left with. I think the final tally was seven bottles of coke, about half of which were open, but not flat, a bottle of wine, and an can of beer. Score! And there were still like bags of chips and wedges and stuff, so that rocked. Barbeque chips for breakfast.

We hassled Clayton a bit (yeah, like he could get away without being mocked) but no one’s really done much in the way of cleaning. Si and I set up the wings on the dining table again, and brought out my computer. Such net withdrawl, man! I had lots of emails which was good.

Y’all are loving the “Joanna Is” form, aren’t you? Here’s a list of what I’ve recieved so far:

Joanna is:

• wonderful
• poculent
• never lost for words
• one of my favourite people in the whole entire universe
• too blunt
• slack with her journal entries
• mine
• yer a wee belter
• late posting to day

The “Joanna is Mine” one is a little bit disturbing. Sure, claim me if you like, but it’d kinda sorta help to know who you actually were, so I could know who I belonged to!

(written when very drunk – I’m suprised I can read it to type)

Good sense would suggest that perhaps that bottle of red shouldn’t have gone down
QUITE so fast, but hey! I was dancing, dude!

Wow, I can’t believe how cool Kate is. I mean, I told her about the aloof thing, and she
was fine with it. Then I told her about Matt and she was so sympathetic. I can’t believe
she fell for someone off a bulletin board. SIMON DARBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Excuse me while I try to take my boots off.

Okay, so I was at Katherine’s End of Exam Party. Personally, I have never liked the chick
but a party’s a party. My mind is going to fast for my brain, no wait, that’s
Hands, to keep up. No socks, this is a good thing. Fuck I love my red tshirt.

Shirley and I got really lost but I found our way cos I had all these Ellerslie flashbacks.
LIVING WITH MATT EEEEEEEK. (God, will I be able to read this in the morning?)

I quaffed red wine and danced lots. This chick comes up to me and was like “I moshed
with you at the Feelers”. I immediatly and bizzarely thought she was Nicola (Asian) then
remembered so we hugged and she was like “you GO girl” and danced. SPICE GIRLS.
Tutorial D convened in the corner. I so love Kate.

I have to say that the weirdest moment of the might was when this guy grabbed me around
the waist from behind. It was a fully sexual moment. The last guy who did that to me was
Current Infatuation Boi – and I so should have gotten with him then but I stupidly didn’t.
FOOL GIRL.

Anyways, when I told the Dsters, they were all like “Was it the guy in the Hawaiian shirt?
He did it to everyone. You could have erotically danced with him”. Sure, cheapen my
moment. I didn’t turn around so I don’t know who it was.

Clayton and Gayle were SO cool. Thre’s my special mention. And the KFC. Shirley so
laughed at me, but that’s okay, telling her about Car Moments. I’m so mean to her. I
should stop. So drunk going to pass out

xoxox

Joanna

oh like my towel