I think my lungs are broken. I'm going to avoid going out for a while. Not because of the lung thing, because I am an embarassment and it doesn't really work out in cost-benefit analysis. I walked from Parnell to Kingsland last night. It was not fun.

Can winter hurry up and end?

This is apprently the first picture I saved to this computer. It's called Johannes and the Dinosaur.

Mt. Pokemon

So despite getting anxious about other people showing up, I totally did not make it to the Mint Chicks. By the time I finished getting drunk with my flatmates and having imaginary food poisoning it was sold out and stuff. Instead, I ended up at that Cross St rave, hanging out by the wall feeling bored. Raves are actually really shit. What a fucking lame thing to become fashionable. Everyone just seems really unconvincing, like they're just going through the motions. No-one can dance properly, no-one really likes the music and it just turns into a no-talking party. Also, really bizzare demographics: viaduct munters, bogans and scenesters all in one place. I wanted to be one of the bogans. They were so awesomely self-contained.

I ended up picking up a band and had to wake up at 6 to get them settled into the various pieces of furniture they were sleeping on. They didnt leave the house till 4:30 or so which was kind of shitty. I really wanted to shower and get donuts but I couldn't.

Umm...

I wish I could be bothered reading Harry Potter. I've only managed to get through half of the first one in audiobook. Audiobooks are not as good as they're cracked up to be, especially when its an elderly man doing Hermoine's voice.

I meant to say I don't like the Mint Chicks, don't like them much at all.

They got some weird-ass shit in their attic, don't they? It's like they live with Mr. Wizard.

I just bought some MUUUUUUUUUSTARD jeans from America. I'm pretty excited. My favorite jeans now suffer 'spillages' every time I sit in certain positions and i'm having to stitch the crotch closed everytime I wash them. You probably didn't want to hear that, huh? I think they're ready for retirement anyway.

Everyone who reads this and lives in Auckland (all three of you) should come to The Mint Chicks. I really like them but I don't know... nostalgia or something.

Trippy

One of my lecturers is also my Myspace buddy! Cool huh? She was my buddy before she started lecturing and everything. I’m trying to think of a way I can exploit this for profit but I’m not coming up with much. Maybe I can threaten to shame her if I get bad marks? I don’t know. I can actually see a lot of disadvantages like having someone I know read my essay: shame. Also, the class is full of scenesters which is really crappy. Lots of acquaintances who I don’t really want to get to know better. I’m surprised by how anti-social I’m being. At the moment I pretty much only want to hang out with Wellingtonians OR A TALKING CAT. That would be really awesome.

In other news… nothing.

Except that my new flatmate is really cool and I’m glad that the domestic front is finally sweet. She uses the word ‘solid’ to mean ‘cool’ totally unself-consciously .

Also, I have a new bedsheet which is a relief after keeping the same one for over a month.

I have been thinking about growing my hair and beard really long and dressing like a lumberjack. That’d show those dicks at WINZ. AND THE LADIES.

THRILLS AND SPILLS.

A portal full of dragons and shit

For someone who spent all day in bed I sure am sleepy. Today way the best end to my holiday I could have imagined. Four of us lay around in Matts bed for like 8 hours. I think I got up maybe 5 times total and the furthest I got was to the toilet. We got Matt to deliver us KFC and I got to drink beer with breakfast, in bed. It sounds like it would be really boring but it was great, we just sat round teasing Matt and trying to create a psychic link. I also got to hang out with Baly properly which is awesome. He is so high up in my list of favorite Wellingtonians.

The party the night before was also really great. I will never tire of seeing kids I knew as gross little 4th formers getting drunk at parties with us 7th formers. Also, hooray for not saying or doing anything particularly stupid.

Now all that separates me from Auckland is a much needed sleep and a 12 hour bus ride. I'm feeling pretty ambivalent.

I can't really think of a title

I want to go home now! Stupid family pressuring me to hang around. I think I’ve fulfilled my being-an-asshole quota sufficiently for the next couple of months and can go back to being normal.

It’s weird, I have this inflated notion of how much I can get away with without alienating people down here and I always seem to feel the need to test the limits of that. The general result is that I have a couple of really fun nights and then spend the rest of the time trying not to remember them, eventually fleeing to Auckland in a cloud of disgrace. Nothing I’ve done has actually been that disgraceful, I mean, not as disgraceful as that other post suggested. The ‘near threesome’ was, for instance, nothing of the sort and the bar was mooned through a frosted window (and not alone). I know those didn’t sound like the best explanations, but in their contexts the incidents made more sense. The point is whether or not my deeds have been particularly bad, my attitude probably has. I’ve been too willing to get too wasted and have managed to be one of last party leavers way too often. Those shouldn’t be too bad in themselves but they combined with a really arrogant, self-interested attitude which makes me a really unpleasant person to be around. It’s like I take on the classic tourist position and make the whole thing about me having as much fun as I can with no concern for others.

Less than 2 weeks into my trip I’ve managed to be a dick to so many people that I’m really dreading going out. I have a dinner party to go to on Wednesday and I’m scared that my social skills have collapsed beyond the point of managing polite conversation. More profoundly, I’m scared that me and (some of) my Wellington friends no longer have anything in common and that if I talk to them sober or even at length, that will show up. There’s also the related fear that if I talk to them too long or without an escape clause (I was drunk blah blah) they’ll remember what a boring idiot I actually am and the false esteem they have for me due to my moving away will be damaged. It’s pretty stupid but this is the sort of thing that worries me. This, and what’s for dinner.

I sneezed blood but I don't think I have tuberculosis

I’m allergic to work! I never get sick ever and since I’ve been here I’ve been sneezing and eye-watering and cotton-mouthing. This sucks! Still, I’m glad that I now have an excuse to be a bum. Speaking of which, I have to get a job when I get back to Auckland. I hope it’s graveyard shift somewhere.

I think I’m going with Boxer by The National as my current album of the year. I was so so resistant thanks to the hype and the questionable music video but it is just so good. Like a way way better version of Interpol. Such a good drummer too.

I have it intermixed with The Editors and some other stuff on my mp3 player and the contrast is really interesting. There are a whole lot of similarities between The Editors and The National especially in terms of the singers’ deliveries (I keep getting them mixed up at the start of songs) and the tone of the music but as far as likeability goes, the gulf is huge. I think The Editors have the same problem as Maximo Park in terms of their song writing. There’s a tendency to depend too strongly on, often really bad, hooks and choruses. The songs have a shallowness which they try to compensate for with melodrama and pseudo-intellectual lyrics. It means that they’re kind of good for maybe 2 listens and can produce some reasonable singles but are pretty irritating in the long run.

And that’s why I don’t like The Editors.

Also, sorry Battles, one of your songs reminds me of The Beautiful People by Marylin Manson and another sounds like Chop Suey by System of a Down. That is just gross. Plus, get over your flanger already.

Being paid to blog (because I am at work)

So I am in Wellington now, actually I am in the Hutt but… you know. So far my holiday has been pretty great. I’ve gone out every night but still managed to be a reasonably attentive family member (i.e. no hungover grumpiness).

On Thursday I went to some party at Good Luck. It earned maybe a 6.5/10. Good Luck is pretty shitty as a venue and I was really only interested in hanging with old friends. Maybe I should come home less often because I’ve noticed my welcomes are getting less and less dramatic. Being broke and unable to pay for drinks was also pretty shitty. My highlight for the evening was sword fighting using florescent bulbs. That was pretty cool. I think I might have glass in my hand. Getting to take over Matts bed was pretty good too. Its only since coming here that I’ve realized how shitty my Auckland bed is.

The next day was kind of retarded. I ended up sitting round Matts room for like two hours waiting for him to show up so we could go into town. The dude has no books. I ended up reading the Illustrated Edmonds Cookbook, it wasn’t that great. We were meant to be heading into the Hutt to see The Proposition before we left but it was about 45 minutes in by the time we got there so it wasn’t great. After a couple of hours of messing round we sorted ourselves out and headed of to Palmerston North.

The ride was pretty unremarkable, as were our first couple of hours in town. It was kind of like I had expected: pretty empty and rainy and unpleasant. We went to a liquor store where I got yelled at in the carpark and then went to get drunk in the car. We succeeded. When we actually got into the venue things were pretty lame. There was some shitty Wellington roots band playing so I got to try heckling for the first time in my life. They just would not stop playing.

I don’t know if it was Tom’s fault or the venue’s but he was up on the stage and performing before the other band had even cleared off so for the first half of his set there were a bunch of guys wandering round the stage picking up gear. It looked like he was just some who had jumped on the mic and it took the crowd a while to work out he was playing. Eventually they seemed to get it and it seemed to go about as well as could be expected. Tom was great as usual.

The best bit was that after he played I totally got to mack on a Palmy girl. I was pretty impressed with myself. Especially because she was actually pretty cool. Obviously it didn’t go anywhere because
a) We were in Palmerston North
b) I’m Chris.

On the ride back I froze my ass off and Dutchy puked on me. It was pretty funny, especially because Dutchy’s reaction was to get really angry at me.

The next morning I was really surprised to find that I wasn’t hungover and spent the day hanging with the whanau. I baked a fucking awesome vegetable lasagne.
The first couple of nights home I was doing really well with the drinking. I’d managed that awesome achievement of getting really drunk and having fun without turning into a fuckwit. I have to be pretty lucky to pull it off but my luck ran out on Saturday. I can’t remember too many specifics but I was basically being either unfriendly or overfriendly and also saying really stupid shit. Things went really shit when, some time after 2, I realized that almost everyone I knew had gone and that I’d missed my bus. Facing an hour wait I took up a seat at the side of the dance floor and hit the smuggled wine hard. By the time I stood up I was pretty munted and I ended up sitting on Nigel’s knee and talking like a retard. After talking to him for about half an hour I said something so monumentally lame that I realized I had to go and escaped downstairs. Somehow I ended up at the bus stop surrounded by kids who had gone to my high school and playing my new found role of ‘creepy drunk older guy’. Luckily I got shown up in that respect by an hippie burnout on the bus who told them not to grow up and told me that he doesn’t use moustache wax when its raining because it goes fuzzy. I was very happy when I got home.