Happiness and joy can be found in the mp3 of Nsync doing the a capella Bee Gees medley at the Grammys. When they do “How Deep It Your Love” it’s just brilliant.
MCC was good today. Today we confronted our bullshit. I’m loud and rude and obnoxious but I try to be really nice and polite and well-mannered around people. Arrgh! But the advice is to just ride with it, to not try and ignore the shit. Hey, cool.
I saw the Shrugs play at the Temple tonight. The sound wasn’t all that great, but the Shrugs put on a scorching show. It was big and loud and really bloody choice. Plus also and, all of the Shrugs are hot, and that is what makes rock roll. Yes, come down with me into the swamp. They’re playing tomorrow in Raggiz and I’m going to see them again.
I was at St Lukes today and I saw a guy who’s in a band. A band that’s doing rather well for itself and was even given a full page profile in the last year’s rock issue of The Face. And there he was at this really un-rock mall. Yet he looked undeniably like a rock star. It was like he had this bubble of coolness surrounding him. I, however, felt like a daggy housewife. I was on a mission to get some of that shampoo that doesn’t encourage my hair to frizz up.
Today at the Mind Control Cult (MCC), the Charismatic Cult Leader (CCL) said that people who are all like “oh, I have found enlightenment and inner peace” are deluding themselves and that they are denying all the inevitable shit feelings. You need to come down to earth and feel the dirt between your toes. Ok, that’s a big paraphrase, but it’s all about the meaning, maaan.
It was announced today that M2 will be stopped the weekend after next. Oh, I will miss the late night music video delights. Particularly all the cool homemade videos on Number 8. I have a feeling that it’s going to be replaced with a different type of music video show. This is a good thing because there were parts of M2 that weren’t working. The top 12 was always dominated by the same songs every week, month after month, and it just got boring. DJ Sammy fans also need to feel loved and wanted, unfortunately.
Today’s interesting email
To: Robyn Gallagher
From: [Interesting name that suggests English is a second language]
Subject: Fashion parrage
Dear Sir,
We would like to participat in fashion parrage. Kindly furnish us with the proceedor.
Regards,
I’m still trying to figure out what it means, but I suspect that it may have something to do with the fact that one of my web pages is currently in the Google top ten search results for “fashion parade”.
I was hooning along the North Western motorway when I noticed something slightly different as I approached the city. The exit formerly known as Grafton is now called Port. I’ll miss the Grafton signs - it’s a much more interesting word than plain old Port - but the fact is that that motorway exit will very soon be extended all the way down to the port.
So of course I had to venture down there. It’s quite exciting. The motorway now goes down Stanley Street about as far as the Caltex. I noticed an interesting detail on an overbridge. Instead of having slabs of plain concrete cladding the supports of the overbridge, the concrete had stylised leaf patterns imprinted in it.
I like going for random drives, so new roads are always exciting.
A few months ago my laptop fell on the ground. I was visiting my parents and had put it on a bed - an unexpectedly springy bed. When I sat down on the bed the whole side of the bed sank down and the laptop slid on the floor. It hit the carpeted floor on the side where the power cord plugs in. The computer was fine, but the plug got a little bent. I got some pliers and managed to get it back into shape.
I could get the plug back in, although sometimes it needed a bit of twisting to get a proper connection. Things were ok until last night. The plug was in its slot, but no electricity was getting through unless I actually held the plug in a certain position. Then when I was going to bed, I pulled the plug out and there was sparking and crackling. Uh oh.
So today I went along to my local Mac dealer. It’s the normal Mac practise to not fix components but to replace whole parts, so I had to shell out about $230 for a new power supply. It’s a little bit stylier, but still. $230, maaaan.
This month has been full of billz, billz, billz.
But today I checked my post office box and the Shrug’s November EP was there. It’s so good. I heart the Shrugs. They’re playing at the Temple on Thursday. Hooray!
Damn it.
“Before the match, Team New Zealand skipper Dean Barker and syndicate head Tom Schnackenberg stressed that the [hull] was not the team’s ticket to success. But 3.9 million New Zealanders disagreed and were adamant that the Black Boat was a rocket ship.”
I wish the Herald would not write shit like that. I wish they would not make such gross generalisations.
When my mother was pregnant with me, she and my dad went out on a yacht. I think that’s the closest I’ve ever been to being on a yacht. I’m not interested in yacht racing and I can’t somehow attach extra value and meaning to the New Zealand boat solely because it’s run by New Zealanders. And conversely I can’t find space for hate for the New Zealand guy on the Swiss boat. I mean, here’s this guy who is so skilled an talented that he’s risen up and been offered a really excellent job that means he can do what he loves and be able to do so for the rest of his life and we’re supposed to hate him for that? No, that’s not right.
Loyalty is a two way street. If Team New Zealand want me to be loyal to them, they also have to be loyal to me.
Dylzno and I did some filming today. We’re making a short video thing about Auckland. My favourite thing was standing in front of one of the billionaire boats full of drunk people and saying “The viaduct is still full of wankers, but they’re loyal, America’s Cup-supporting wankers.”
We saw a boat called Awesome. It had a bunch of drunk people maniacally waving to everyone around the harbour. I reckon that’s the sort of thing that would happen on board a boat named Awesome. Like, you’d get on board trying to be all urban and sophisticated but a few glasses of Lindauer later and you’d end up lifting up your top and demanding that some complete stranger look at your tits. This applies to both men and women.
I was accidentally stalked today! Dylz and I were having dinner in Mercury Plaza and he pointed out a dude in Breeders t-shirt, cos I’d earlier been bitching about having forgotten to buy one. Then later I get into my second favourite chatroom (choice! ch@tr00mz!!!) and this dude’s like, “Were you at Mercury Plaza today?” It turns out he was the guy in the Breeders t-shirt. How very delightfully choice.
You know what I’m going to say, so I’m just going to say it. The Breeders rocked. It was such an excellent concert. It ruled in so many different ways.
I’m going to write more later, but I feel it is necessary to note this: they played “Gigantic”. And that’s not supposed to happen. Everyone says that Kim Deal doesn’t like playing her Pixies songs, but there it was, the first song of the encore. Mando started playing the bass and there was this collective feeling of “no way… it’s not… it is!”. At the end everyone was singing along with “a big, big love”. It was one of those wonderful rock moments, not unlike when I saw Johnny Marr and Neil Finn do “How Soon Is Now”.
But they also played a whole bunch of Breeders songs, some Amps song, one Kelley Deal 6000 tune, and finished with a punk classic by Fear.
Sweet as.
Today at the Mind Control Cult I discovered that I’m too attached to my possessions. The charismatic cult leader sang “My Funny Valentine”. I discovered my vision.
Doesn’t that just sound fruity? Like, really, really fruity? It is, but in a good way.
I saw “The Hours” today. I was trying to work out why Nicole Kidman looked so very frumpy - it’s because she has a false nose on. She was good in this film because she wasn’t being “Nicole Kidman: Sexy flame-haired sex bomb serious actress”. She was being Virginia Woolfe. It’s a fairly heavy movie, there’s lots of emotions, but in the end everything works out in a satisfactory way. It’s a sad ending, but not a tragic one. There’s death, but it’s more about life than death.
I’m so excited because the Breeders show is tomorrow. I’ve had two dreams over the last few weeks involving seeing the Breeders play. I’m not expecting it to be like a religious experience, I’m not going to be worshipping at the Alter of the Kim and the Kelley, I just want to have a good time.
Oh yeah, speaking of drinking beer. A few months ago I was in Sydney having dinner with a cool guy in a nice Italian restaurant overlooking Darling Harbour (yeah, that happens all the time) and the waiter comes over and asks if we want to order drinks. The guy orders a Boags and asked me if I’d like some wine. Oh no, kind sir. I would like some of that finest Tasmanian lager. I slept alone that night.
Wheel alignment: yes
Warrant o’ fitness: yes
Registration: yes
And there’s cold beer in the fridge.
I was stopped at some traffic lights and I happened to glance at the vehicle registration card, stuck to the windscreen in its little plastic sleeve. I was trying to read the expiry date, which was a little hard to do because it was backwards and slightly obscured by a seatbelt reminder message printed on the plastic sleeve. But from what I could see, the registration expired in August, Ok, cool. Then I looked closer. August 2002. Uh oh.
So I after I dropped my clothes off at the Chinese laundry I went off to the vehicle testing station to get a warrant of fitness. My car failed that because the two front tyres were worn. Over at the tyre place down the road I discovered that they were so worn that there were bits of non-rubber stuff showing through. The tyre guy said it was due to the wheels not being aligned properly. So new tyres today, alignment tomorrow and then I should be able to get a warrant of fitness and then get the registration.
While I was waiting for the new tyres to be fitted I read a book in that park in Kingsland. It was nice (both the book and the park). Waiting to get the tyres done also meant that I didn’t get to pick up my washing before the laundry closed. So until tomorrow I’m stuck in my laundry day clothes, which feels feels a little strange.
Some girls dream of having a sugar daddy who’ll buy them jewellery and take them out to dinner at expensive restaurants. I wouldn’t mind a sugar daddy who’ll buy me tyres and pay for wheel alignment, man.