Hubris.co.nz

I fought off my anxiety over whether or not anyone would actually show up for America at the Country Club with the phrase “Well KateH is coming, and that’s all that matters”. But then when I went to Chrisana’s goodbye Paramount drinks on Friday night, after expensive but tasty Thai with Karen at the Oriental Thai, everyone was like “fuck yeah!” about coming, so I informed them that the official colours of the university were black and green, because that was the colour of balloons that I’d happened to buy at the supermarket the night before.

This of course meant that Saturday was spent in cleaning the house and decorating the lounge with said balloons which had been blown up by me and the boys with the aid of a balloon pump the night before while they watched the Steel Mill and I tried not to get beaten up for making derogatory remarks about metal, and green and black streamers, and rasturbated banners that said “Pledge Eta Beta Pi!!!” and “Pledge Gamma Gamma Gamma!”. The boys, meanwhile, went to Bunnings and apparently had long discussions with one of the men there and spent $38 and came home and built Liz the Funnel with valves and all. Why Liz? Because apparently all funnels are supposed to be named for whores. Bart said “Liz Phair!” and I would have growled at him except that I knew he meant L** S*** instead. Smoo was like “Liz Phair’s still a whore” and I was like “hush your mouth! She’s a boring suburbanite mom now. I miss the blowjob queen!”.

The keg was delivered in the afternoon, and we had many long discussions about where to put it – if we left it on the front doorstep, would ferals come up and steal it? But if we put it inside the dining room, would it make a mess? Eventually we compromised by closing off the kitchen door at the end of the hallway and putting it there. I dressed myself up in the university colours

This pic was actually taken at the end of the night, so imagine how fantastic I must have looked sober. And yes, I do appreciate that anyone who knows me probably has very little idea of what I actually look like sober…

and was just about to go and pick up Brad and Karen when I got a voice mail on my phone from some guy saying “I got a link to your blog from Public Address, and it sounds like you’re inviting all and sundry to your party, and I don’t know anyone in Wellington so if I ask politely, can I come?”. I was like “huh? I don’t write a blog” but since the guy had left his number twice, after he took my interogation questions in good stead (“1. Gilby or Izzy? 2. Who would win in a fight between a pirate and a ninja? 3. What word did you use wrongly in regards to talking about my website?”), despite him giving all the wrong answers I texted him my address, warning that the party would be fairly small – around 16 people or so, and that he would stand out.

It turned out that at first, the party was very split, with Bart’s Eta Beta Pi clustered in the dining room, while us Sorority sisters were in the lounge. Ash or perhaps Kristen even said when Sebastian came running in “Sebastian, what are you doing in here? You’re a boy!” and I was like, ummm, what about Brad? But we mixed it up more when people went outside to do funnels:

Bart sucks it down

LisaB takes in her own body-weight in beer, while Kristen is caught in the act of being so very 2006 with her camera-phone

Eventually, having laughed at the boys enough, Gamma Gamma Gamma were also persuaded to do keg stands.

LisaB fearlessly went first, and achieved full verticalness. She is our hero

Ash loved it so much she went twice

KateH showed up late for the party but hurried to make up for lost time

I was worried that they wouldn’t be able to hold me, but they assured me they could, and so I did a couple as well. The first time my arm slipped and hit against the keg which wasn’t fantastic, but holy crap, keg stands are my new favourite thing in the entire world ever. EVAH. Except that I am so fucking sore today, or at least I was until I took a lengthy spa at the gym in my lunchbreak instead of doing a proper workout. I am naughty. My arm also got hurt when we jumped Smoo as soon as he came home from work and forced him into a kegstand while Bart paddled his ass with a cricket bat, except that he got my wrist a lot more than Smoo’s ass, and Smoo kicked out, and knocked Kart over, but to be honest, I’m not sure if she even realised. Even Karen did a keg stand when we agreed to let her put a plastic cup of daquiri and straws down on top of the keg so she wouldn’t have to have beer.

And of course, because it was Country Club we passed around our pieces of trivia, and I made everyone hot dogs (which were fucking good) and also oatmeal cookies (I really should remember to bake more often) and assorted other snack foods. Eventually most of the people had left (*), so me and Karen and KateH and Bart and Smoo just sat around the dining room table eating apple pie and vodka jelly. Bart was falling-off-his-chair drunk, and incredibly entertaining. He decided to call up everyone in his phone who wasn’t at the party, and even though it was 3am, we let him. Yes, we are enablers. And we laughed our heads off. Then Karen left, and KateH and I decided that it was time to watch Mischa Barton die, so we did, even though the boys were dividing their time between bitching about it and falling asleep. I am so so so so glad I got an Auckland friend to attend a Wellington friend and Country Club event, and that it all went well. We only made $85 back on a $200 keg, which sucks, cos obviously not everyone who drank it chipped in, but meh, I generally spend about $100 on each Country Club anyway, by the time I add up all the costs.

In the morning KateH and I went and had coffee (She was like “I didn’t think I’d stay, but of course I did – when have I never stayed after one of your parties?” and I racked my brains trying to think of an answer), then I spent the day doing laundry and watching videos, dozing, and avoiding the large pile of dishes in the kitchen. I wonder if they’ve been done now…

September’s Country Club will be Morocco, after we realised that we have totally neglected Africa, and then there’ll be a German Octoberfest in October, strangely enough. Then when I come back from San Fran, we’ll do a Mexican Day of the Dead, and that’ll be all of North America polished off…

Karen rang me on Friday and said “You know what I’ve been thinking about all week?” and I said “Chummeez?” and she said “yes” and so we made plans to have dinner there. I think we did really badly with our ordering. Some words of advice? Unless you like things that are squishy, avoid the stirfried tofu and vegetables dish. The tofu is icky squishy wobbly like it shouldn’t be, and the dish has the most revoltingly textured mushrooms in the entire whole wide universe in it. They’re like jellyfish with cellulite and a bad case of ebola. Blaaaaaaaaaargh. And the kung pao chicken was very average and the sizzling fish with Singapore sauce was very cornfloury. It might have been an off night for the kitchen, cos the waitstaff were still very friendly and lovely and all, so I will continue to recommend the place – if you don’t order the above dishes. Cool.

I took the bus into town with her, after I’d finished faffing over what I was going to wear and had brought the twins out (that’s Mary-Kate and Ashley to you, sir – and believe me, Mary-Kate seems to have been totally cannibalising Ashley). She told me that what was actually Pirie St was Elizabeth St, so I got all confused except for the fact that I’m not that dumb, but it is damn hard to read street signs in the dark without your glasses, so I was worried about getting lost, but I found my way there in the end – passing by the flat that I’d wanted to move into, and also those people on the street, but I didn’t greet them in case they thought I was stalking them… which uhh of course I wasn’t.

Eventually I got to Katy’s, and sat down and had a bottle of wine with her and Puck. Kristen and Kartini were already at Mike’s party, but we were in no hurry. At least, I thought we weren’t, until Puck started a series of toasts which very quickly finished our glasses, which was of course his clever plan all along. Genius! I’m going to try that one some time. So yeah, it was off to Mike’s place for the party then. He apologised to me for being rude at Karen’s house, and I was like, well, apparently she slapped you, so you obviously deserved it, so let’s call it even. I may have downplayed the fact that I don’t even remember him being at Karen’s, since I was throwing up in the shower at the time, but that’s beside the point.

The party was fun! I got to talk to Lisa about high school (she was two years behind me, but voted for me in the student rep elections cos I put an L7 line on one of my campaign posters – “wake up and smell the coffee, or just say no to individuality”, so she rocks) and she was like “you’re so cool, I should
totally hang out with you more often!” so I was like awwww. Kristen was waxing lyrical about Interpol so much that I feel the need to buy their album even though I’ve only heard it in the background. We also talked about knee-melting lines from songs like “I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life…” and “you’re my forever” and so forth. I had a big argument with someone about the magazine that I work for, because he is paranoid and thinks we’re out to get him (as opposed to actually just reporting the facts). He did no good for his own character. I wonder if he knows that he makes himself into a caricature? Nevermind. Another guy was openly starring at my Mary-Kate&Ashleys all night, and after muttering something about being afraid i was going to have a wardrobe malfunction said that yes, they really are very nice breasts. That was kinda hott – I think being that open is somehow much less sleazy than being ‘discreetly’ sleazy. Plus, he reminded me of Justin, so it was pretty amusing. Brad showed up unexpectedly cos I’d texted him the address, feeling very much like a North Shore person whilst doing so, since he was walking home and was actually in the neighbourhood at the time, so it was, as usual, lovely to see him. Polls were done on whether or people would rather go out with a ninja or a pirate, and as hypothesized, girls said pirates and boys said ninjas, with the exception of the caricature boy, who declared he’d rather be with a pirate “because they have ‘p’”, and then when I asked if he was worried about scurvy he said that he’d get all his greens from his pipe. And he thinks it’s the magazine that makes him look ridiculous? Righto.

Anyways, eventually around 3.30 or 4 or something, we decided we’d head on down to Sandwiches cos Ayna was supposed to be djing. Katy said that she wished she was a lesbian but she was put off by the thought of girls tasting like fish. I pointed out that if she’d ever kissed a guy after he’d gone down on her then she’d know that wasn’t true, and she concurred and we honked each other’s boobs. I was very tired at that stage, so shortly after we got to Sandwiches I decided to call it a night, knowing that I was supposed to be meeting Matthew Holloway for coffee at midday the next day, or in eight hours time, or however you choose to view time, and that i would also have to go and see my parents in the afternoon to pick up the rest of my crap, and I didn’t particularly want to be completely dead when I did that. As it happens when I woke up at 11am (after having got up at six am still staggerly drunk to feed Sebastian) I was far too ill to think about getting up, so I had to postpone coffee, but I was doing okay by the time Mum and Neil came to pick me up at two.

The pickup of my stuff was remarkably easy and drama-free. Carrying the boxes and all the drawers up the steep staircase in my flat wasn’t so easy, but hey, that’s life. They also told me that KateB was in town, so I texted her and she came around to watch DVDs, which meant that I missed going to see The Brunettes, but them’s the breaks.

Sunday I spent sitting in the sun devouring The House of Leaves which was fine, until I continued reading it when it got dark and my skin was crawling in terror and I was debating never leaving my bedroom again incase the hole in the roof of the bathroom swallowed me. I still haven’t finished it cos I’m waiting til I can read it in the daylight again. Scary scary book. It’s currently stuffed in my sock drawer, but it still makes all the doors in my house more creaky and it still keeps me awake.