Hubris.co.nz

Apparently Russell doesn’t read Next. If he did, he’d know (because somehow apparently it’s easy to miss on Hubris, because it’s only like OH I DON’T KNOW, THE TITLE OF EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PAGE) that “Joanna McLeod doesn’t like the word ‘blog’”. In fact, that’s the first sentence of the piece, entitled ‘Blogging On’, on page 34 in the March issue. And then you can stare at the picture of me and reminisce about the time that the photographers came to my house instead of thinking about how my cheeks swallow my eyes when I smile. Must remember not to smile so hard. Which is easy to remember today since it’s Tuesday, and Tuesdays mean counselling day. But back to the article, I’m pretty sure that I told Danielle that I was one of the first people in New Zealand to write an online journal, not in the whole wide world ever, but Lani has the broadband cord right now, so I can’t check in my emails. But once I can, maybe I’ll post everything I said, so that I can pretend that it’s a whole article just about me, without any references to LonelyGirl15.

I can’t remember what else I wanted to write about. Things I talked about today included how worked up I got when we talked about the thing that I don’t like to talk about, and later when we talked about something else she was like “your hands seem to have calmed down now” and we laughed, which was important because of course I am still trying to keep her entertained, even if she doesn’t actually exist outside of that room, as she said. We talked about things that do or don’t define me, and my homework is to try and come up with a definition of myself(*). I told Lani that when I got home today and talked to her for way too long despite the soreness of my jaw (more about that later) and was like “Oh man, if only I could stand the word, because then I could be all “Joanna McLeod, Blogger”. Lani said she thought I was creative and inspiring because of the cake I made my mother and the story I wrote and illustrated to explain her present, and apaprently also because of the curry I made for Flat Dinner last night. Well, the curry’s not hugely creative, although it had cabbage in it for the first time ever, but the bathroom sure is clean and sparkling, as is the kitchen, and I bought a new shower curtain with gardenias on it. It’s clear, which is rad cos it lets in more light. And isn’t mouldy (and yes, I am still celebrating small achievements). When I showed it to Smoo he was like “well, I kind of wish you’d got one with dragons on it.” Smoo makes me laugh a lot. When I asked him what the proper ettiquite was when gentlemen callers have left their panties (okay, perhaps just underwear, but panties is so much more of a fun word, and wouldn’t it be amusing to think that I did someone who was wearing women’s underwear who wasn’t a woman? Yes) behind and you don’t think you will be seeing them again, he suggested starting a trophy wall. I could hang them between the pictures of STDs hanging on the lounge wall. Heh. What do YOU think the correct thing to do would be?

Anyways, today I felt bleh and also nauseous and then full of mysterious stomach pain, and then the buses didn’t happen, but finally I made it out to O’Bay, and had a swim with Karen out to the raft. Afterwards I sat dripping water on the decking and debated about whether to go home to my house like I really really wanted to do, or to go back to Karen’s to try on the dress she’s altering for me so that I have something to wear on Friday to the Tiki Tiki Party. The sewing won out in the end, via the supermarket so that we could have steak sandwiches with spinach pesto. I cooked the porterhouses rare, so they were succulent but soooooo chewy, and Karen made a mountain of super crunchy coleslaw, and so I chewed and chewed and chewed. Then when she was sewing, she told me to sing to her, trying to distract me from Q, and when I asked what, she said “Ten Green Bottles”. So I did. And she didbn’t ask me to stop, so I kept on going, for about 20 minutes. People should know not to have that kind of stand-off with me, because oh yes, I will be calling your bluff on that. So now both my jaw and my throat hurt. At least the muscle in the inside of my thigh has stopped aching, because man my sisters laughed at me as I limped around on Saturday. I told my parents it was a swimming injury, but it might actually have been a gym thing. Perhaps.

Fuck, I am exhausted. I had big ideas about what I wanted to write about, but mostly now I just want the cord so I can get online, post this and then lie down and vege. It’s 11pm already. Where did the time go?

Upcoming events: Craftwerk on Thursday, Tiki Tiki on Friday, Harvestbird on Saturday, then Fia’s birthday next Friday and Country Club: Australia on Saturday 24, not to mention Shirley and KateH both going to be in town next weekend. And then it’s Peti’s the week after and Bic Runga, and then two weeks after that we’re going to Martinborough and then it’s practically my birthday and Dead Rockstars, and then I must get out of town for New Year’s Eve…

So today I had my doctor’s appointment and I thought it might be weird to have to tell someone new about my mental history, but as it turns out she’d googled me and had the citalapram waiting on her desk when I walked in.

Okay, so that’s not strictly true (or even vaguely true at all), but she did give me a prescription without me having to cry (much), and I get a subsidised script for citalapram because I told her I can’t take fluoxetine. Well, technically I could but the bourbon necessary to deal with that would probably not fit in too well with my plan to not drink for a while. She took my blood pressure and it turns out that it’s now 140/100 – remember how it was 131/99 last time and THAT was high? Yeah. So tomorrow I’m going for fasting blood tests and pee tests and all sorts of fun things like that in case my kidneys are packing up instead of it just being stressed. Apparently there’s also something that can send stress into your body if it’s fucked up, so that could be interesting to find out if maybe it’s my physical health that’s fucked instead of my mental health. While going over my depression history before I filled in the depression survey and discovered I was circling the 3s on almost every list, I told her that I wasn’t in as bad a condition as I have been the past when I’ve signed up for the crazy pills, and she was like “you don’t have to justify yourself to me”. Well, she didn’t say that, but then we talked about early intervention and blah blah, and she also warned me of the likelihood of increased anxiety in the early stages (wahoo!) and said that I needed to be on the lookout for suicidal feelings. This is why the modern world is so fucked – in order to avoid getting to the stage where I feel like I might want to harm myself I need to take a drug that comes with the risk of increasing the wanting-to-harm-myself impulses. But hey, I dealt with that okay when it happened in March 2003, and I’m sure I can do it again with Tom on speed dial and KateH just five minutes drive away. Oh no wait…

Ha, sorry, I suppose this sort of thing is inappropriate for me to be making jokes about, but come on, it’s me – when have I ever been appropriate? I have all the shiny knowledge, pamphlets, plans to call the work-provided counsellor on Monday and most importantly the motivation to not be like this anymore that I need to defend myself, which makes me practically Harry Potter. And also some Danielle Steele books and movies of the ’80s teen genre to fill in the time until I feel okay again. Plus, thanks to Lisa, I have new craft projects to fill my time. I’m not huge with the wanting to talk to people right now, because it makes my chest hurt thinking about it, so I’ve decided she doesn’t qualify as a person. Instead, she’s an Awesomeness. Last night she brought over milk and cookies and paint, and we made art inspired by magazines. Her piece, which has been called Oh Penelope is fucking awesome. My art talent? Not so much so hot. So instead I created a quadtich which is a celebration of celibacy.

HPV

Chlamydia

Gonorrhea

Genital Herpes

That’s so Jane. Heh. And if I hadn’t used up all our gig of bandwidth this month watching Dick in a box over and over again, I could download the photos that Lisa kindly took for me of my art, since of course I’m still cameraless and have yet to suggest to Brad that he hire a panda costume to go over to Aro and get it for me. If it’s even there and not in the taxi. If I did leave it in the taxi, it’s probably fair payment for me yelling at the driver after Chrisana got out about how the taxi driver two nights before had fucking groped me. And about how fucking angry that made me. New year’s resolution: only take blue taxis from now on.

Today Lisa and I went to op shops in Newtown to find frames and then tried to eat at the Medditereaneaneanean Warehouse, but the bastard was still shut, so we settled for Hell at her house, and I made myself feel better about my own life by watching House of Carters in absolute shock and disgust and confusion about why the fuck they could possibly ever want to put their lives on TV. Their father is so clearly a child molestererer. And yes, I laughed my ass off at one of the daughter’s stories about how her mother told her she was goign to horse-riding camp but then had her kidnapped and sent to Fat Camp because she couldn’t make any money for the family as a fat kid. Oh yes, Karma and I still need to have a cuddle and make up at some stage. Then we watched more bad TV, and came here to watch Say Anything, because really, who doesn’t want John Cusack standing under their window with a ghetto blaster? Exactly!

Now at some stage I might try to go to sleep, but to be honest, I’m waiting for City Life, because haha! And besides, everyone needs a late night TV addiction while they’re waiting for the drugs to start working. I had 90210 in 2001 (not to mention September 11 coverage), and then Buffy in 2002. At least I’m keeping it home-styles now. But tomorrow I will endevour to get up before noon, so I can get these blood tests out of the way. Wahoo, needles!

Wednesday March 6th

I myself am often amazed at life’s little quirks.

So I have confessions to make. Do I do them at the start or the end of the journal? Or should I put them in where I guess they fit chronologically, in terms of why I started to think about it allanyways? Or should I put them in here and just get it out of the way? Okay. I’m not a good person. I think it’s commonly known that I’ve slept with someone while I was in love with someone else. It gets worse. You know the boy I refered to as “my fucktoy” ? Well, he had a girlfriend when we started. I felt twinges of guilt if I ever had to hang out with her, but the only time it ever really bugged me was after I had to go and get the Morning After pill when the condom broke, which I’d never had to do before and it was scary although I played it all cool and “yeah it’s not a big deal at all” and he’d offered to come with me but when I went to his house afterwards, she was over. In fact, after he broke up with her, the attraction really wasn’t there for me, except for the night that I scored someone at a wedding who wouldn’t come home with me so I manipulated the fucktoy into shagging me again even though wewere both kind of bored of it. I’m pretty sure that most of the girls that I’ve scored have had partners. I have no idea about a few random people that I’ve met in bars. I use people when my self esteem needs boosting, or when I’m bored, or I’m trying to make some sort of point or if I just feel like having some fun. I take advantage of people. The only thing to my credit in all of these situations is that I’m ALWAYS straight up about it. I never even imply that I have feelings for any of them, or tell them that I want to see them again when I don’t. I don’t ask them to tell me all about them when I’m just using them for one purpose. But that’s not enough to redeem me and give me good karma is it? Karma Police, arrest this girl, and everything.

One of the excellentest things about living in town is that I got up 15 minutes before my tutorial today. I had friends in class today! Since I changed Com Strat tutorials, I now have it at the same time as Mike, who’s Kateb’s friend and who I always thought was cute. Excellent, especially since his girlfriend ISN’T in the same tut. Also, I was chatty with Jinan, who is my partner on our first assignment, so that’s me sitting between two people I knew and introducing them and everything. That feels much better. And then, when I was waiting outside the building to have lunch with Clay, I bumped into BenII who I had a crush on first and second year, and since he’s doing advertising this year, no doubt I’ll see him around also, so that’s good. I think he was the boy that I first starting using the phrase “eyecandy” on. Blah blah blah.

After lunch with Clay, I went to see if Icould get my text books any cheaper from Borders, and then I went to peruse their magazines, thinking all the time about my IMC branding essay that I have to do. I lusted after an Adbusters magazine, but it was like $32 so I settled for a Q instead, because it came with a cd’o the best stuff’o 2001, so now I’m listening to N.E.R.D a lot. And Ash.

In Persuasive Communication this afternoon, we learnt that if you get an inconsistent reaction, you’re much more likely to persist in an attempt to get attention which explains oh so much about me. Apparently also, your levels of persuasion ability are related to your level of self esteem as well – the lower your self esteem the easier it is to be talked into things because you don’t have a voice in your head validating your own opinion. That also makes sense.

This evening Maree picked me up and took me to her house where we met up with Shirley and walked down to Cima for drinks. I got an attack of the blahs and fell silent for a lot of the time, plus I had a lot of study to do so I went home. Much later in the evening, I started to watch Last Tango in Paris, if only so that I could see how Marlon Brando looked mid-career, as oppposed to him being very hot and very young or very old and very ugly. I think there’s a lesson in there that all beauty fades . But it felt too hollow for my liking so I went and bought chocolate and watched The Princess Bride instead. One of Clay’s friends rang for him while he was out and because he’s new to Auckland and doesn’t have any friends he spent 15 minutes insulting me instead. Eventually I had to hang up on him though, because honestly, that’s no way to speak to a lady! He was the guy that I’d meant to score the night I ended up with the boat shoe boy instead, and so he had me worried when he said something about going to a vet to check for diseases. I worried that he was implying that maybe I’d given his friend something, but possibly I’m just paranoid. I don’t remember the sex but I do remember freaking out afterwards and making sure he was wearing a condom. Besides, I’m pretty 99% sure that there’s no way that I have anything, although I will book a U22 appointment real soon just to double check. I know I’m talking very ummm ‘loosely’ in this entry tonight, I think maybe it’s my way of reminding myself not to revert back to this behaviour just because I’m scared that whenever I like anyone I end up getting hurt.

Tomorrow I’m taking Clay to Cash Convertors so he can sell his little tv cos we finally got the widescreen back. Boys and their big toys eh? I swear, this widescreen tv is so fucking ugly, only Ben’s stereo matches it in excessiveness. I don’t have a class until 4, but I do have a lot of study to do before then, especially since I’m interviewing my mentor on Friday morning and I gotta do a lot of prep work before that, and I’m sure there’s something I was going to do tomorrow night. So much work! But I love being back in class, I so missed talking to other intelligent people these past six months being at home all day by myself or even worse having to talk to Ben. Intellectually challenged isn’t really intellectually challenging! Oooh, that’s MEAN. I just have a fetish for arguing with Communication Students, I think. Or not arguing as such, rather having heated discussions. Learning is very good for me. And to that end, I’m going to go and finish reading Q and then maybe try to sleep, but I’m betting I won’t be able to.

Thursday 18; February, 1999

I almost got a venereal disease today. Trudie came over to print out her CV but when we went to open up the file, my cunning virus programmy thingie told me that her file was infected with SHOWOFF. So yeah, we had to clean that off, and she had to go home and retype all her stuff before bringing it back. Poor sweetie. All that before a job interview.

So okay, it’s not a venereal disease, but hey – it was still an adventure, right? And it was about the most exciting thing to happen to me all day, too. I took my CV in to the new motel around the corner – hey – they MIGHT need someone to do admin stuff – you never know! Or failing that I could clean. I also dropped into Sandeli to say Hi to Tamati, and give him his invite. He’ll forget about it, so I’ll ring him on the 6th. He didn’t show up to my Goodbye party when I left Welly last year, so I rang him up the next day and left a message going “HAVE A NICE LIFE!!!!” – hey – I’d had a reaaaaally bad night. Anyways, back in 1999.

Gail came by in the evening to pick up Clayton, and she made me laugh with her idea for a ‘follow the phonecord’ party game, which I guess you kinda had to be there for. The lurker’s been lurking all day long, man. Like I CARE about the old microwave in the hall, or the old boxes and shit. Jesus Wept. I wonder when I can get him to move out. God, I am SO the uber-bitch, aren’t I? Jo’s flatmate was throwing out food that had grown a personality from being in the fridge too long – I was wondering if Leyton would grow one if we locked him in the fridge too.

I went to bed before 1am, last night, but I didn’t manage to get to sleep until like 4am, and it’s even hotter today. Shite. However, I’m fully exhausted, so even though it’s before 12am now, I might go to bed.

xoxoxoxox

Goddam my journal is boring these days. I think I need people to spice up my life for me. Yup, it’s form time again:

Name:

Email:

What you could do to spice up my life:

And also couldya please please please sign my guestbook, especially if you’re like a bit of a fan but you’ve never let me know? Thanks, I appreciate it more than meat appreciates salt (LEARN YOUR FAERIE TALES IF YOU DON’T GET THAT!!!!).