Hubris.co.nz

Today I started my new job. I get the most awesome chair ever. It’s all posh and adjustable and sexy. Yeah that’s right, the chair was the most exciting part of my job, except for all the very interesting conversations that I had with people about interesting things and stuff that’s going to happen.

Of course in order to start my new job today, I had to finish my old job last week. I was sad to leave. They gave me a lovely card and a present and said so so so so many nice things about me. We had wine and gossiped and went to Siem Reap with the account manager of the design agency we use who I used to know when I worked at VUWSA for dinner and had more wine and more gossip, and then we went to Mighty Mighty for more wine, and I saw really random graffiti on the wall in the toilet that said “I don’t have any Heroes / they are all useless” on the wall and thought “hey, that handwriting looks familiar” but I wasn’t sure because of the lack of punctuation, and also just the plain randomness of it, so I wrote the phrase on a piece of paper and got others to confirm for me that yes, unfortunately that was my handwriting. D’oh! Don’t remember that at all. Maybe it was post Great Blend.

Anyways, it was a super fun night and a lovely way to end six of the best working weeks of my life. It was – as I said to them – just like a beautiful summer romance. But getting up early on Saturday morning to go to Zinefest wasn’t so fun. My new dress arrived that morning, and I decided to wear it, which wasn’t the best decision I’ve ever made – after I set up my zine table, I went and had breakfast in Doria, then was using the church bathroom when I looked down and was like “JESUS CHRIST!” at the amount of cleavage I was showing, and I was like “oops, sorry!” looking up. And so I put my hoodie back on for most of the rest of the day. Zinefest was kind of fun, talking to new people, but I was so tired that I wasn’t very talkative. And it was strange watching people reading my zines right in front of me. Because I primarily do my dirty-talking to strangers via the interwebs, I’m not used to seeing their faces when they read it. This was much more immediate. But it was nice to see people giving me their hard-earned money, and people asking me where I stock. And now you can read my zines in the Wellington Public Library collection, if you’re that way inclined!

Then I went home for naps, and to tidy up the house, before going to pick up Lisa and Jay and Jasmine who’d already been drinking. We made the house all purty with lights, and the party began. Highlights included the tasty Martina from Auckland showing up, meeting Other Lisa’s very tall boyfriend, having a cute Dutch boy compliment my boobs a lot and then grab them a lot – and then a little while later he fell asleep on Lisa’s shoulder when we took him outside for fresh air. A Scottish brother and sister sang the national anthem together – loudly and a couple of times. Dylan told me he loved me when I “licked my own nipple”. I use quotation marks, because to tell you the truth, and all secretly now, I didn’t actually. You know that Ashley’s tip is waaaaaaaaaaay low down, and I would have had to haul myself out of the halter in order to properly do it (I can’t get close on Mary-Kate) so I settled for dipping my tongue inside my bra, and that satisfied the crowd.Lisa’s crowd sang loudly. The Scots brother broke a glass, the Scots sister broke a chair – admittedly I think it was the already broken chair. But they were hilarious and cute, so it’s okay. Everyone molested Sebastian, who responded by bringing in a live mouse that I had to take outside. I got to meet Anji’s new gentleman caller, Bambi, and Lisa squealed and jumped up and down in glee when I gave her the cake I made:

I also gave her Liam Finn’s I am Lightning but since she already had it, I offered her up my brand new Appetite for Destruction – which she gave me back in the morning saying she couldn’t take it from me. So after we’d cleaned up the house and got pizza from the Med Warehouse, we went to Real Greedy and found her CSS, and I bought The Gossip for myself, woo. And I have my ticket to their gig, so hurrah!

Okay, earlyish night for me tonight, new jobs are exhausting. So much paperwork!

Lots and lots of stuff is going on right now. First and most important to you is that I will be selling my stuff at Zinefest. You should come along, say hi and buy my zines and sugar scrub. And yes, in case you’re wondering, if I slept with you prior to 2007, you will be in 101 Stories but possibly only a very small part. Heh. I said “small part”.

I am so grown up. I sorted out my magazines yesterday night, along with some other form of grown-up activity. I umm ummm okay, maybe I just shivered under a duvet on the couch. BUt you know, I ate vegetables for dinner, so that’s grown up. I wish I had a camera to post a photo of all my Qs in chronological order, their red spine numbers just above the lilac boxes that they’re in, and then there are my Bitch and Busts in pink boxes, along with the sadly finito Jane, Frankie, and Yen. Then there’s a whole shelf full of Metro and some green boxes full of assorted music magazines and “culture” things. And the Next that I was in and the New Idea with Penny’s wedding in it. You do care what magazines I read, you know, because I am sitting here trying to define myself for you. And also making a note for myself in later years to remember that now is when I have decided to put a lot more effort into being a feminist. As long as you define “effort” as “reading the magazines and making sure that I never shy away from the word”. The back cover of the 10th anniversary of Bitch made me cry at the awesomeness of a reader deciding to spend $3800 on buying it to support the magazine. And then when I spent much of the last weekend in bed reading them and Q I also got all choked up hearing Athlete’s ‘Wires’ for the first time, about the singer’s premature daughter, which tapped in to the many many baby thoughts that I have been having lately. But more about that later, perhaps.

We still haven’t found a flatmate. Quite frankly, I’m fucking loving the quiet around here when there’s so much going on in my life. It’s so good and peaceful. But I really can’t afford to keep paying $254 a week in rent, no sirree. The fact that so many people have come over and not wanted it has got me down a little, like WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME? WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME? But not that down.

I went and saw my counsellor today, for the titular spring-cleaning of my head. I’d really wanted to see her a couple of weeks ago, but she was away on holiday, so I thought I’d go now before I start my new job and work miles away and all. I got the most awesome surprise though, when I told her about my new work, because it turns out that not only do they subscribe to EAP too, which means that I can get 3-5 free sessions if I need them but she’s also based at their offices every other Wednesday to do drop-in appointments. That is so fucking rad. I’m hoping I won’t actually need to see her very often, but it’s so great to know how easy it will be for me if I do. We talked about my abandonment issues, and about my sex life, and my Hard Career Decision to take up my new job instead of staying where I am, and how it’s been freaking me out to get so much praise lately, but how it’s helped me to realise that I’m actually quite good and capable. And we talked about what I need to do in order to keep my head in order (more exercise, and how excited am I about the prospect of swimming in the sea again? SO excited), and when I talked about how I feel like I’m being held hostage by my body lately, like it’s deliberately keeping my periods from me, we talked about how right now I think I will adopt children because I can’t imagine going off my meds and how I am scared shitless of postnatal depression, and she told me that there are very specific medical programmes to help people like me with that sort of issue if I change my mind at a later date. And that was nice to hear.

Tomorrow is the last day of my contract. We’re going out for dinner afterwards. I’m going to be incredibly sad to leave. I will have to treat the whole time I had there as a beautiful summer fling that was too good to last. Stupid taking care of my career and seeking out new mental challenges! Then again, my manager and I went through every single piece of paper on my desk today left over from predecessors and filed them all. My biggest filing pile was ‘R’ for ‘Recycle’. If only I could be so ruthless at home.

On Saturday after ZineFest, Miss Lisa is having her birthday party here. You should come along. The man in a bearsuit on her invitations was so good it made me embarrass myself in front of Luke Buda (yes, it was her MS Paint skills, not the wine that emboldened me). I want to write about what I got her for her birthday and what that meant I bought myself, but I will wait. Then next Saturday I’m going to Bar Camp. I don’t know what I’ll talk about yet, if anything. But seeing as how my new boss is speaking, it’s probably a good idea. And then on the 19th I’m going to another conference. I would kill for a sleep in at this stage. Sunday I plan on staying in bed all damn day. You’re all welcome to join me in my lovely black & white linen.

Right now I’m watching Watch This Space and downloading the tracks I like, which is awesome (I will buy albums if they strike me a lot). I just read a review of Fireworks Night that describes them and the Arcade Fire as “baroque-pop”. Brilliant! And yes, I’m totally going to try and use the word ‘Baroque’ in Scrabulous. But it’s time to go back to Lisa’s Outrageous Fortune DVDs and pull the duvet up, because hot damn, it’s cold. See you Saturday, yes?

Oooh look at me, I’ve finally got my journal kind of current. Except for filling in my RAGE about Dana being eliminated instead of Jill. Or Zayra, naturally. But let’s not talk about that (or the boards that I have been reading, or the tears that have sprung to my eyes today watching clips of Marty and Jordis…). Let’s talk about me instead!

Firstly, what I left out of my Auckland recap was that while I was at Annabel’s, she pulled out her copy of Boys Boys Boys Boys Boys as I emailed her a copy of 101 Stories, and it was soooooo weird reading it again. Did I really write that? Did I really live that way? Strange. No wonder people have mentioned what a progression 101 is. But I would still really love someone to send me back a copy of Boys because I haven’t got one. Please? Someone? I know they’re mostly pretty bad photocopies anyway, but maybe someone has one of the A4 versions that they could send me? Thanking you in advance.

Other things that are good in my life right now is meeting up with the rest of the Wellingtonista crew tonight for martinis (except for me because I am under 30), and then a cocktail party tomorrow night for Cinta’s hens’ night. Then on Sunday dinner for Karen’s birthday. On a much healthier for me note, I signed up to do personal training boxing sessions today. I’ll get to hit stuff! Yay! I think that will be fucking awesome stress release, and also I’m trying to mix up my exercising, because I don’t want to get bored and I really need to step things up for the sake of my wrist and also not dying on the flight to America.

I am so looking forward to America, like woah. The time is creeping closer and closer. In fact, America at the Country Club is next Saturday August 12. We’re having a kegger Frat/Sorority party with John Hughes and Showgirls. And a pillow fight. And junk food. And initiation ceremonies and hazing. You should come along. In real America news, I rang Kate at some ungodly hour last Friday night when I got home. I was aiming for her birthday but kind of missed, and also I was drunk and lonely, and I miss her! All the same, I’m really not looking forward to the phonebill.

This afternoon I am sniggering at the Peaches CD I’m listening to and trying to postpone doing more phone calls, but since there are a hundred people on my list (almost literally – once I finish assembling my list there will be anyway), I suppose I shouldn’t put that off for much longer. Work is interesting right now in terms of RFPs, and black holes, and also new projects that I am working on, and the fact that I went on some weird trip on Tuesday and cleared out about four things I’d been sitting on for months. Go me. And now I must go and pee. It’s important that I tell you this, honest.

Finally, just some links to things I’ve been up to lately – TV Squee / Rockstar Obsession / Pirate and Auckland photos. That’s about all. OH! And I have an RSS feed that works now, which I would add in to the bottom of the page, except that without a laptop I can’t FTP in, but you can find it at http://hubris.co.nz/rss apparently, according t the wise Heather. That’s it now. Ask me some questions about what you would like me to tell you about.

So, I’ve made a new zine, and it’s called 101 Stories That I Want to Tell You. If this was an album, it’d probably be a collection of b-sides and rarities, as it contains pieces I wrote as long ago as early 1998. Actually, it contains pieces that I wrote as long ago as early 1986, but not so many of them.

101 Stories is the logical follow-up to BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS, except that this time it’s about emotions instead of bodies. There are names, faces, images and photographs in this one. Even if you were the most dedicated fan/stalker I’ve ever had, there will be stories in this zine that you have never heard before.

If it was an album, I imagine that there’d be critics who would say things like “this is a bloated and self indulgent waste of space. Perhaps it should have been cut down to 10 stories instead of 101, and then maybe it would have some resonance”. But maybe that’s just the critic in my head. The point of 101 Stories is not about choosing the finest words, it’s about getting rid of all of the words in me, so that I can wipe the slate clean and start again.

It well and truly does contain 101 (or more) stories that vary in length from a single line to several pages. Featured stories include

Right now I have mysterious tunes from Mr Holloway playing in my ear. He sent them as a trade for my Zine. It’s funny how it polarises people’s opinions – some people say it makes me sound really really fucked up, others say they wish their girlfriends were that sane. Go figure.

I could be at True Colours right now, but I couldn’t be bothered, so I gave my ticket to Darren. Easy come, easy go. Has a year rolled around already since the last one? This time last year I was also hungover, but I would have been cheering at Pacifier and feeling weird and freshly fucked. A year. You’d think things would change in that time, and I guess they do. Because now I totally regret running out on *IV. Oh well, there’s only so much trying again that you can try. Second chances blah blah blah. At least the boy that I hit on something shocking last week which I can’t remember doing was nice enough to email me afterwards.

Other things? Liquor, of course. I was waiting in line for the bathroom at Spaquers last night (Lance and I were on our way home from Verboten but we thought we’d just pop in and say hi to Johnny – cue us staying for over an hour, dancing to house music and running up $40 somehow on Johnny’s tab without asking for anything) and this guy started talking to me, and he was very friendly and then he asked me my name and thought I was offended by that, and then he told me his and then I went to pee, and realised that he was a semi famous actor (ie – was on Shortland St) who everyone who reads this has probably seen having his head cut off, and that the reason that I didn’t recognise him is that the actor is rather gay and this fellow seemed to have been hitting on me. Celebrity!

Today Darren and Lance laughed at me a lot when I was dragged out of bed to feed Sebastian (he got biscuits instead’o jellymeat cos I wasn’t feeling up to it) and threw up in the shower for a while. Then KateH came over and we went to see ‘The Lizzie Mcguire Movie’, which is a Disney flick aimed at 10 year old girls. We got free coke and ice cream though, bless. And she bought me potato chips. We had the song stuck in our heads for the whole car ride home, but thank god it’s gone now. Then it was back home for some more blessed sleep.

Ammy’s gone so we need another flatmate. Kelly was going to move in but she can’t afford to. We’re kinda fucked. I hate finding flatmates.

It’s my birthday soon. Please feel free to buy me pretty things like jewellary, knee socks, scarves, bright coloured eye shadow and lip gloss. I also need some knives, and a cat door. Thank you. In exchange, I will tell you that I saw Pluto play on Thursday and they were so fucking amazing, as per usual, and “8 O’Clock” nearly made me cry, as per usual, and I took a fuckload of photos what you can look at here.

Friday September 6th, 2002

Last night, I went as KateH’s +1 to Salmonella Dub at the Saint James, but we were both pretty drunk before we met up, and then she said she could get me drinks on receipt, so I was like, well sure, so we just ended up sitting in the booths upstairs gossiping/yelling _with_ each other, not at each other, cos she’d had a bad day, and I had conspiracy theories running around in my head, and oh god, I just wanna say (and you know I sorted this out with you Katie, so this is not a diss) how can you people not be able to tell the difference between “so I met this guy last night and he was totally amazing and I felt really close to him and I so want to see him again” and “I shagged a boy last night – he was really nice but we had no connection”? Maybe my communication skills aren’t as good as I’d like to think that they are. I know y’all have my best interests at heart though and I love you for it. Too defensive my fucking ass.

Anyways, so we didn’t even see Salmonella Dub, though we heard them, and then KateH went to the B-Net afterparty, and I managed to blag my way in cos I wanted to spend more time with her. I have to say, the so called “cool” people of this world are actually really fucking boring. Then I went home and lay on the floor in the lounge for hours and hours watching Nine Inch Nails videos and then talking on the phone til almost 5am.

Today I got woken up by Penny calling at 10.30am, and so she came round around 1pm and we caught up on the St Pats Boys gossip from the CarnageMatakana party. Then Anji rang me with hot exciting gossip. Now I am going to have a shower and take my green folder and go to bed.

BUT! The purpose of this journal really is to let you know that I have finished my zine, “BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS” and I would like to trade it with you. Zines, yes, how retro 1993. Go to this page for more information, and yeah, that’ll be cool. Thank you!

Dammit, some slapper has just stolen my bathroom. Must go sort this out!

Thursday September 5th, 2002

I’ve had whispers of conspiracy theories going on in my head, which really serve just to demonstrate what a paranoid paranoid paranoid girl I am. Nevermind.

Hmmm, what have I been up to lately? Working yesterday afternoon, but Terri was out sick, and Bridget’s away for a month (dammit, I nearly called them by their real names) and I didn’t have very much to do and I couldn’t move further without help from Terri, so I did do some more work on my zine. It’s nine pages long now, but I figure I have to make it at least 16 to make it worthwhile doing, and I’m finding that really, there’s not all that much more I can write. I’ve already outsmutted myself, I think (oh, for those of you who’ve just tuned in, my zine is called “BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS”). Still haven’t found out if I got the job yet or not. It’s stressing me out more than just a little bit.

I was naughty and wagged my HR Tut this morning, but luckily it turned out that it was canceled anyway. Joseph was more than usually disturbing in our PR Practice tut, so Haley and I ever-so-grownuply wrote notes to one another, mostly about DiscoDan and I think I caught her up on my conspiracy theories and she just laughed at me. She also wrote me a note saying that I should tell Clayton she thinks he’s hot and that he should give her a call if he ever breaks up with Kara. I laughed. Oh, I’ll interrupt me with this side story here – Clay is a little grumpy with me tonight, cos he was telling me a story about this guy who tried to pick him up on the bus, who kept quizzign him about his background and what school he went to and stuff, and so when Clay told him, they tried to compare names of people they knew from there but they had no one in common, so Clay went “oh, but I know (umm forget his name) from Queer Nation”, so in the retelling of it I was like “oh of course Clay – all gay people know each other and they all watch Queer Nation” and so he’s shirty with me for accusing him of stereotyping, but oh well. Typical self loathing!

Anyways. Where were we? Oh yeah. So after our very long plenary meeting, Haley and I went to the Playhouse cos we thought we mighta been meeting the fashion students for an interview, but we weren’t sure cos Haley had sent out the email and not checked it recently (grr!) but they didn’t show, as I kinda expected, so we just had a drink and did much gossiping instead. Then I went home and phoned Momma, and booked plane tickets to Wellington. Yes, I’m going back there, even after declaring loudly many times to many people that I never ever wanted to again. Here’s why:

1. Ayna had invited me to her birthday party on the 18th of September.
2. We’re having a PR social down there to meet and greet (and apparently get leered at) by prospective employers.
3. Mummy and Daddy are going away for a week on the 19th, so I will get the house to myself, plus since I’m flying down on the 18th, I will get to see them for a day,which is probably all I can handle of them.
4. Karen and Anji and my KatieB and my FattySi are all down there and I miss them all and wanna hang out with them big lots.

So now I just have to get the time off work, or rearrange my days somehow. Luckily I do have a day in lieu up my sleeve.

This evening James picked me up and I went to see the team named “Stupid Horse” play indoor netball. It was fun! And it made meeee wanna play, although I haven’t since the glory days’o Standard 4. I have no doubt that I would suck at it – a lot. But still. Oh and Kate – I didn’t say this tonight, in fact I didn’t even think of it, but then I was watching Juice, so guess what? TEHEHEHEHEHEHEHHE. Love you baby.

Bo is still staying at her aunt’s, babysitting her cousin, so I rang her earlier today cos lord knows I can’t go three days without her ray of sunshine in my life. I’m so glad she moved in. Speaking of people that I like, have I said lately that I miss you? And I miss you. And you.

I have been having major crazy dreams lately – last night’s involved the cast of Home and Away, and a supervillan who was placing poisonous evil nasty creatures everywhere. It was fucked up. And oooh, I also dreamt about Amy and Andeee, so I really must give them a call sometime. I have a lot of catching up to do, I’m really quite slack huh?

Friday August 16th

Okay, so I’m more than a little busy right now. One sentence summaries for each day that I can remember:
Wednesday: client meeting then back home to bed with food poisoning and evil migraine to bliss out on codeiene and the rest of “American Gods”
Thursday: meetings, work, essay essay essay essay (til 2am)
Friday: up at 7am to finish essay, take it to tech and then run to work, where I worked fucking hard on complicated projects that require responsibility all day and still managed to add two pages to my zine, then home to KateH and fetafettucine and “Beat Street” – a brilliant movie to watch except on the wacky smoke like I was you may just end up screaming, and then I did a whole bunch’o ironing.

I’m going to The’Tane tomorrow to see Bradley and dress up like a princess, YAY. Ni ni.

Thursday August 8th

Very very very much did not want to get out of bed today, as today is a Low Self Esteem Day. Or rather, a feeling that I am just very incompetant and untalented. Realising that there’s actually a boy in my class who’s kinda cute and intelligent made me perk up a little (I told Terri the other day that I’m currently at the stage where I’m almost developing crushes on Door Knobs and other inanimate objects). Plenary meetings brought me down again, just for a change, cos they’re so boring and frustrating and time wasting. Luckily this one ended twenty minutes early, so I was half an hour early to work, and I had Robyn’s zine to read on the bus on the way in, which was good. Choice even.

I bought donuts for Skew Terri and Bridget for our WIP meeting. No really this doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that today I also did my application for Terri’s job. Actually it doesn’t really. I just have the feeling that Skew doesn’t like me and that I hassle him too much, and yeah, donuts seemed to be the easiest way to fix that. I had to make like 30 phonecalls too, checking contact details before we put out our second majorest publication, and mostly got people’s answerphones so I had to leave the same message over and over and over again. It made my head hurt a lot.

And then I was walking home across the Grafton Bridge and it was freezing cold when suddenly there was a girl yelling at me out of a car, and I was like ???? but it was Annoushka (I’m sorry, I can’t spell your name), of course. I mean, it’s just logical that my sister’s best friend would be in Auckland, when I haven’t seen her in years, since waaay before she got married. But anyways, her and her husband gave me a ride home, cos they were staying in the same street, and it was much warmer in their car. And it also gave me the chance to test out my hypothesis that it’s quicker to walk home than face traffic at that time’o day – verdict is that it’s slightly shorter in a car.

This evening I was moping at home alone cos my mind was just mush from too many meetings nad hten having to do horrible job applications and freaking out about the implications of me not getting the job (I am NOT going to have another bout of what I was like the last time I was on the dole, i am not i am not i am not (also, side note – I dreamt about K sometime last week, and in the dream she was telling me that she never gave up on me, i just got it wrong)). Bo was out babysitting and Clay was off filming some random short film somewhere (apparently our house is going to be taken over by vines tomorrow) and I was all Meh, so I was just parked on the couch, although there was nothing on TV and reading would have taken too much brain power. Anyways, BradC showed up, and I was like “clay’s not home” but then he pulled a piece of cable out of his pocket and was like “I can do your network now!” and looked all forlorn when I said that it was already done, so I invited him in anyways, and we had multiple cups of tea. So that filled in a couple of hours, and then he went, adn then I boiled kidney, haricot and pinto beans to make kickass chilli, and Bo came home and there was love and laughter again, and now I really should go to bed.

On Saturday night, I am going to go to a hotel room at the Duxton to have drinkies. I receieved the invitation via web-based txt and I had no idea who it was from, but I conditionally accepted anyways, then got very worried when the person who sent it identified themselves by their first name only, without any lastname initials or preceeding adjectives or abreviations, and I was like WHAT THE FUCK? cos I thought it was someone else, but then it was just Jezza, so that’s cool. And then on Sunday, I’m going to play dressups with Kyla – yay! i like makeup and clothes and stuff. Planning ahead, it’s Bo and Clay’s birthday on the 22nd, and so we’re gonna have party-type things on the 23rd so that I can go to Matakana on the 24th. And that’s that.