Hubris.co.nz

I used to carry around a tin that mints from a recruitment company had once come in, filled with half pills. It was of course my citalapram, since I have to take a pill and a half, and they’re crumbly pills so I have to cut them at home with a big knife and a chopping board so they don’t totally fall apart, so I prepare them in advance. When I say “I used to”, I of course mean until last Saturday night, when I lost the tin, so I hope someone picked it up and decided that it was full of half Es, and is now off dancing in a club somewhere feeling really nausesous. Because I am nice like that.

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.

Tehehe. My favourite wine was the Julicher reserve Pinot Noir, which tasted like chocolate babies, and also the Tirohana wines because the guy remembered us from when we were up for Mum’s birthday and asked where our other sister was (she was across the other side of the room). And they have a dessert wine that’s like woah. There wasn’t really enough food so I ate and enjoyed ham rolls, and craved more of the duck, mushroom and quince paste tarts. Mmmmmm. But why is the Boatshed always so damn hot? Last time I was there for Public Address Great Blend I could go swimming afterwards, but not in May. Too much heating. Nevermind. And I saw a friend of my parents’ who is an MP whom I hate personally, politically and professionally so I made very sure that I didn’t have to talk to him. Afterwards we had dinner at Ernesto, where I was a little silly and had chicken, which was boring, but the potato and prune gallette that accompanied it was tasty like woah. I was just envious of the pork bellies of Karen and Anji, but that’s okay.

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?

Do you ever get the impression that I spend most of my life looking for either my camera or my camera cables? Yeah? Me too. Right now it’s my cables, so I can show you photos of my pre-Saturday night. But instead I will have to talk to you about it. Oh the pain.

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.

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…

Today I went to go read the thing I’d sent to my mailing list about the scratches on my arm, but then it turns out I didn’t actually send anything to my mailing list at all. I did write about some bushes on Swinney.org though, and I guess that’s like the same thing, kinda. Last night I was sitting around crying after the season finale of Shortland Street, so I rang up Penny and asked her if she wanted to come around and get drunk. Of course she did. Jeremy came to the bottle store with us too, so we decided to have a cocktail night.

Sparing you all the details, we drank and laughed a lot. Penny and I reminisced a great deal. We gossiped. We danced on the front terrace. I rang Kini&Olivia and was terribly hurt that neither of them want to live with me. We took a series of dumbass photos which you can view here. We rang random people from Penny’s cellphone list that she wasn’t sure she knew, and had very amusing conversations. One guy had just been fined $13,000 for reckless driving. Jeremy gave us random numbers to call too, and then his friend kept calling him back. I bit Penny but didn’t leave any bruise marks, to our deepest regret. Around 2am we decided we’d go be larrikans out in the streets. I refused to go the park around the corner, so we walked up to Shell instead, then walked back playing Pringle Soccer. I had my camera so we took a succession of fantastic supermodel pose shots. We poll danced. Jeremy climbed a tree. I found myself unable to balance walk along a wall without holding onto Penny on one side, which made me mad cos I was really really good at the Beam in Primary school. Penny jumped into a bush which looked like fun, so I did the same, except it wasn’t all boingy like I was thinking it would be, in fact it was sharp and ouchy and I have deep gashes from it.

Today I woke up to say bye bye to Penny (also cos her phone with a goddam novelty ring kept going off in my room) but then went back to sleep, which is always fun to do cos the heat makes me have dirty dreams. I got up much much later then, and spent an hour reading the herald and stuff. My saturdays are so so cruisy. In the evening we did a tremendously huge heap’o dishes and cleaned up the kitchen proper, which was good. I did laundry. Stuff like that. At night, Jeremy and I were watching “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (I LOVE TV3 for deciding to screen 80s teen flicks every Saturday) but Kara kept ringing for Clay who’d gone to bed with an infected foot. She was going to bus over, but I told her I’d go pick her up from work, cos she’s much too nice to take a bus home at 11.30 at night. It’s just as well I did pick her up actually, cos there were literally hundreds of people waiting for buses in Newmarket cos of Christmas in the Park. Ick. “Order! Order!”