hola mi amigos
i have two things to address today: coriander and meatspace-blogtalk.
coriander first. i hate the stuff, as you probably know from a certain previous post. so, here's where things get crazy: i ate some the other day and actually, well, kind of liked it. breakthrough! ami kennedy is my new god. no-one else has ever managed to render coriander edible. she is amazing. really. if she ever offers you pumpkin soup scream "YES!"
and the other thing. i have a slight problem with people chatting to me about my blog in 'meatspace'. like "hey, i read your post about what a tosser i am, and do you really feel totally unloved by all your peers?" fuck off! for me the fucking point of having a blog is that it's pretty much like a journel. as in, don't talk to me about it! use the obvious format and COMMENT if you want to share your opinion. that's why i enabled comments. get it?

does this site look backwards to you? it was frontwards when i first went to it, then it changed around. are they being weird and fancy, or is my computer being weird and freaky? yikes.

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by istlef but the wrod as a wlohe.

i stole that from this guy. hope he doesn't mind...
and check this out too if you haven't already. thanks frank.

today it's bloody cold i'm unimpressed. very. i want sunshine and lollypops. oh, here's something very exciting... the dickhead flatmate (cam) has finally moved out. what a relief! and to make that even better... i've persuaded the others that we needn't get another perspn and we can have that as a spare room / studio. yay! i'll be paying lots more rent (i can afford it, marce and bex can't so i'm gonna pay the bulk of it) but i think it's worth it to finally have some real space i can do my art in! and we figure it'll make a great wee hanging out room for winter, gets lots of sun and it's small which means it'll be real easy to heat. i'm excited! now i just need to find some time to sort it all out and make it into a working studio... then find some time to do some painting...
i got horrendously drunk on friday night. gin. damn stuff, tastes so good but hurts so bad. i even threw up in the morning. yuck. i never do that. my liver must be so shot, i didn't actually drink very much. damn 18 year old binge drinking, now i can't handle any at all! though it sounds like poor jeff was even more sick than me... :-(
enough about the hangover. the party was good fun, i was in a particularely bratty/happy mood and i had a great night!
i just got an email from a good friend who told me that she's moving to melbourne. shit. it's too far to visit. and it costs more to send letters there. 40c i can handle, $1.50 is pushing it a bit. she's one of those people who i write to quite often, usually on a whim with no particular news to convey. i like writing those letters. or cards, or random bits of paper. so if any of you want a real live snail mail letter from me send me your meatspace address. i'll be happy to oblige.
ta ta for now.
xx

Edie Brickell! yay!
and more! yay!

a couple of days ago i got myself a beautiful shiny red valve radio. cool beyond belief! i've been on the look out for a good one for *so* long, and this one is just so ME! it perfectly matches my bright red shiny kitchen scales (retro of course) and bright red shiny coffee table. yippee! i've come to the conclusion that i'm an incurable junk-junkie. and proud of it.
oh, a quick amendment. the best friend link in the previous post shouldn't have had quotation marks around it.
i feel a lonely christchurch winter coming on. that inevitable introspection that seems to come with the season. not necessarily a bad thing, i quite like that inwardness. i probably need it at the moment. there's things at the moment that i'm avoiding thinking about... and can feel gnawing away at me...
happy happy happy happy
...happy happy happy
(must keep up appearances...)
how is it that this post started with a cheery description of my new toy, and quickly descended into a morbid bout of depression? fek. the truth always finds a way out.

my car cost me $160 yesterday. brake pads and discs. erk. and my grandmother's in hospital. gaaa, family guilt. i know i *should* go and see her... am i cruel and heartless if i don't? probably. the guilt, aaargh the guilt!
tomorrow i'm off to galavant in sweet oamaru, at their organic wine & food festival. yippee! i'm going with a couple of the chickees from work, no doubt it'll be a great day. and probably an expensive day...
gak, no i'm not going to think about that.
would quite like to spend some time with my "best friend", but not sure when (if?) that's gonna happen. sigh. he's leaving soon. sigh.
off home now to catch some Zs. early start tomorrow. goodie.
x

here's a couple of blogs i've wandered into lately.
*Shouting Into the Void
* grrrl meets world (a canadian chickee)

hello. i haven't painted in ages. too long. maybe that's what is missing at the moment, i'm not venting through art. though i'm not really one for the angst-ridden soul-bareing kind of artistic expression anyhow.
am i depressed because i'm not painting, or not painting because i'm depressed?
should i go to art school? more to the point, will i? do i want to? do i need to? will it be a big fat waste of time and money? will it change my life for the better?
answers, please!
there's so little of me at the moment. i find myself getting bored of conversations half way through, nothing more to say. too much effort to listen. so much bullshit. so few pearls.
tell me about something that inspires you. it doesn't matter what, just something that makes you feel alive. don't try and cheer me up, don't try and make me laugh, i'll be very happy to hear anything you have to say. please.

HERE GOES: SOME STUPID THINGS THAT I'VE DONE RECENTLY... enjoy!

*got my hand stuck in a post box. i started walking away before removing my hand, not a good look to be jerked backwards mid-stride... luckily for me there was no-one to see this little mis-hap as it was about 2am (a totally normal time to be posting letters, don't you think?)

*leapt out of my car at high speed, then stopped in my tracks to stare intently at my slightly flat tyre... looked up and there's this guy in a business suit with a bemused look on his face... so of course i feel the need to explain myself, thus digging myself a deeper hole... i scarpered across the road pretty quickly!

*obviously what i said to sabine that time ("i've been thinking about you all day" for those of you who don't remember the encounter as vividly as i do). creepy stalker stylee!

*very nearly running a red light at about 70k after getting a disconcerting text last weekend, scared the shit out of myself.

*and speaking of texting... the time i nearly had a head on with a very large truck in a very dark and narrow tunnel while trying to read a text... the look on the driver's face was priceless... ("aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! i'm about to kill somone!")

*oh, and here's a good one. i was eating gross spirulina yoghurt in my car (marcel was driving) using the little metal disc from the top of the gear stick as a spoon, and marcel put the brakes on. imagine me with yoghurt all through my hair and down my front snorting in a fit of messy laughter... erk!

***feel free to laugh, cry, choose a favourite***

a week or so ago i was sitting at the Yellow Rocket, cafe numero uno. with fishboy of course. as we vacantly gazed out of the [very good for people watching] window we spied two deliciously orange monks wandering out of the visitors info centre. cool! they then proceeded to take very cheesy tourist photos of each other posing infront of the chalice (a chch landmark of the artistic persuasion). of course we couldn't hold back our grins! how strangely incongruous! anyway, there we were grinning away when they started heading towards us, presumably to quaff a quaffee (er, coffee). they spotted us, pointed, muttered to each other... and turned around and walked back the way they'd come! aaargh, dissed my buddhist monks! surely not!

why oh why does this damn thing keep fucking round on me and not publishing posts? actually please don't answer that if you're gonna get all technical on it... my brain crumbles at the thought.
well, if you can see my post from last night you'll realise that it was, er, shit. today is better, the depression isn't quite so pronounced. what a pisser. i was so wanting to go out with the birthday girls last night, and by the sounds of fishboy's latest posts it was a decent gig. arse. fek. shitty shitty bang bang.
today i went to a country fair (yes, you read that right) with my ma and grandma (you also read that right). doing the happy-sunday-generational-excursion. not as bad as it sounds! it was at swananoa, a particularely nice part of north-ish canterbury. and i bumped into steve and v which was a highlight. yay, i hadn't seen them since the wedding.
this post is boring isn't it? yes, i thought so. i'll torture you no longer.

I'M WRITING THIS FOR ME, NOT YOU. BUT YOU'RE WELCOME TO READ IT.

*i don't want to feel uninvolved.
*i don't want to feel unloved by my 'best friend'.
*i don't want to feel ugly and boring.
*i don't want to feel surly and fun-killing.
~ i don't want to feel like alex.
*i don't want to feel untouchable and unlovable.
*i don't want to be sitting here writing this unhappy list because i can't remember how to have fun. or i can't bring myself to have their kind of fun.
*i don't want to be where i am. i'm lost.

THERE, I SAID IT.

i think that i'm happy, then i sit down by myself and i find that i'm not. i'm not happy, i'm not sure i know what it means anymore. because there's so much underlying bullshit that taints my every thought, every action. this hideous self-loathing. it stretches out in all directions, poisoning every friendship, every hope or dream, every achievement. i laugh bitterly at my every move. i'm laughing at myself now, writing this. what's the point? i feel like a fraud, like a fake, an imposter.

one of these days i'm gonna post a list of stupid things i've done recently. and not so recently. maybe i'll have to do it in installments, there's a fair few things to go on this list...
anyways. here's something bizarre and coincidental and more than a tad weird in so many ways: i recently was introduced to crazy tim, a friend of a flatmate of a friend. he seemed familiar. turns out i met him about 3 years ago, and here's how. i was walking home one night, taking a shortcut through a park. it must've been about midnight, i wasn't expecting to see anyone else. i come around a bend in the path, and suddenly am faced with a group of about 60 oddly dressed witches and wizards. a pagan solstice ritual, no less! what fun! somehow i get talked into staying and performing an integral part of the ceremony (not the slaying of the goat, unfortunately). so it was a bit of a laugh, and i got talking to the guy next to me. he and two of his friends came back to my place and we hung out, played guitar, generally had a fun time. it was a good night. that's one of my favourite memories of that summer, and all of a sudden he's back. yep, the same crazy tim. how fucking strange is that? we'd emailed a couple of times, but totally lost touch so long ago. turns out we still have each others addresses though, after this long! not sure what i think of him... he's incredibly sleazy and full-on and just generally fucked, but also quite likeable.

CAT PUNCHING

yes, cat punching. a very odd topic to be writing about, i'm well aware. today i accidentally punched my dear cat in the head. oops! here's the story:
he was spending the night in my room as he had to go to the vet today (not much of a boy any longer...). this was a first off, usually he stays outside. anyways, at about 5.30 am he woke my up meowing at the door. i was rather dazed and confused, after a night of very disrupted sleep (too hot, damn this late summer burst of heat!). i could vaguelly make out his grey form wandering towards me as i called him over to the bed. i reached out my hand to scratch his head... at precisely the same moment that he made to leap up beside me. my fist hit him square between the eyes in mid-flight, and he dropped to the ground where he sat for the next couple of minutes shaking his head and looking bewildered. it must've really hurt the poor darling, as my knuckles were sore for at least 5 minutes! obviously i felt really bad, though the absurdity of the situation didn't pass me unnoticed. i had a bit of a giggle (alright, i near pissed myself) after i'd made sure he was okay.
what a start to the day though...

CORIANDER.

i hate the stuff. really really despise it. so much so that i'm going to spend precious minutes on my day off ranting about it. right here, right now.
it tastes like your grandmother's worst heavy-duty soap. with a side dish of old socks. and it smells that way too. what really annoys me is that it looks disturbingly similar to italian parsley (yum) and we sell both at work, which often results in me having to take a sniff at the bunch to decipher which it is. aaargh! one of my least favourite parts about my job! you'd think that it wasn't that big a deal, but it IS! i dislike it that much. i want to wring the fat neck of whichever tosser it was who made it the popular-herb-numero-uno in recent times. it's everywhere, just waiting to attack my poor taste buds with it's viciously rank flavour. erk. i recently discovered that my flatmate (bex) feels the same. yay! hooroo hooray! someone understands! i think i'm going to start a kill-all-coriander campaign. t-shirts and badges and placards. by the way, any american readers, coriander is what you call, er, celentra? colantra? something like that. don't ever feed it to me if you want to stay my friend. or stay alive for that matter.

GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE TAXI DRIVERS?

I’m driving along Bealy Ave, heading homewards after yet another shit party experience. I stop at the Bealy/Barbadoes intersection, lights are red. The arrow turns to green, I put my car into gear and before I can even take off the taxi behind me is tooting his horn. Asshole!
Naturally I give him the finger in my rear view mirror, then drive at about 40kph as close to the centre of the road as I can get, to further piss him off. After much revving and intimidating driving he overtakes me and speeds off into the distance. Now I’m *really* angry. I slam my foot on the gas pedal ~ resulting in a very sedate acceleration attempt by my little wee car. There’s no fucking chance that I’ll catch up with him before the end of the road, but I try anyway. I’m determined to track him to his destination and then abuse him or give him the "irresponsible driver, poor little me" [hah] story, I haven’t yet chosen which. I’m swinging between self-righteous and just fucking PISSED!
Unfortunately I lose him after a corner (how the hell can I keep up with the tosser when he’s going 80+kph?) and now I’m totally pissed off because I didn’t even see what company he was working for, and therefore can’t ring up and get him in trouble. CRAP!
And that was the highlight of my night… how depressing. Thoughts running through my head at the aforementioned party (why? Why do I still go to these things?) were along the lines of "Yay, I have work tomorrow!" …at least I love my job, because my social life at the moment is abysmal. It pretty much consists of an occasional visit with Dana (instant coffee [ick] and me listening to her latest boy-dilemmas) and being cancelled on by the dear grumpy insomniac, or seeing him and feeling shit.
Thank fuck for the Piko girls!

Helpfull Info for the Day:

OOS/RSI has something to do with the build up of lacitc acid in the affected muscles. this is countered best by the B vitamin Pangamate, which is found in brewers yeast, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.
these don't necessarily act as a magical cure, but apparently they're good at relieving the symptoms and speeding recovery. so there you go, OOS sufferers. eat your seeds!
(by the way, they're also good for regulating blood sugar levels as they have a low G.I. (glycaemic index) rating which means that they release their energy over a long period of time, a very good thing. yay for seeds!)

*i'm not at work today*

my flatmate's dad got an Oscar (sound mixing, Lord of the fucking Rings... or course). god, i'm just glad the Oscar hype is going to die down a bit now. yes, i think it's great that they did so well. i don't think of 'they' as 'we' though. surprisingly i managed to sit through most of the awards, not a small feat. what lame acceptance speeches! at least last time there was some emotional anti-war yelling and the likes. and booing, that was fun. but this time was so BORING! see, that's why i don't bother to watch those shows on the whole. celebrities seem to have so little personality (gotta love those broad sweeping generalisations...)

hola!
que pasa? cuando es tu compleanos? veinte de enero?
hasta la vista.

i'd like to learn spanish, i've been saying it for years
i'm yapping on about it but nobody really cares
so i should go and prove myself
and get my brain back off the shelf
and learn this language good and proper
...then fly to peru in my new chopper

what i'll do when i get to peru in my new [non-existent]chopper is yet to be assertained. feel free to make suggestions. i thought maybe i could become a grower of organic coke, surely there'd be a market for that? organic A-class, the creme of the crop...
yay, a career unfolds before me, my parents will be proud (er, maybe not. i'll tell them i'm becoming a corporate lawyer)

aaah, another day over. my neck hurts. lots. fuck this work stuff, it's bad for my health. though today was actually good, i arrived, picked up my pay, looked in the daily log book.... and discovered that someone else was doing my shift for me. so i got on with some packing (6 hours a week is a surprisingly large amount!) and was joined by ariel. the more i have to do with her the more i like her! a very cool woman. i like how straight-up she is. and calm, she doesn't get stressed and anxious. not mentioning anyone who does...
i finally watched "Last Night" last night. it's as good as jeff said, a total head-fuck! really beautiful and moving and honest. one of those movies that really gets under your skin. after watching it i went on a big drive out into the country and scared the crap out of myself by driving too fast on an unfamiliar road in the dead of the night... life affirming stuff! probably a bit stupid though. the end of the movie is so.... i don't know! it's too difficult to explain the emotion. gaaa! i actually wish that i'd watched it on my own, rather than with a friend (though of course i loved spending time with you dana...). it's a pretty lonely kind of movie. who would you choose to spend your last hours on earth with? it's such a fucking hard question. thinking about it depresses me a bit, because i have a sneaking suspicion that i'd end up alone...
enough of this, i'm gonna start crying if i keep at it!