DRZA was in town to see A Perfect Circle. He sent Teh Matt a txt about buying booze, so Matt and I decided to do a United Nations mission to help the poor, under privileged, under aged children of the T.P.O. massive to get booze. But it turned out that said children were busy being entertained (or whatever it is that Maynard does), so Matt and I sat around and talked about being old, and how the youth of today write incomprehensible text messages and that we never did bloody stupid stuff like that when we were teenz. Then we listened to Suicidal Tendencies.

Matt leant me his Mac OS X install disks (the lucky bastard has a Powerbook G4), so I’ve just spent the last two to three hours (I seriously don’t know how long it took. I totally lost track of time) upgrading to the cool new operating system version they called Panther.

It’s nice, it’s faster and slicker and choicer and this entry is really just checking out how things work in it.

In other news, I am delighted to have acquired a selection of Polish communist-era currency. My favourite is the 100 zlotych note, because on the back there’s a bit of communist propaganda. A series of red flags form the background, while “PROLETARYAT” is printer over the top. Amongst the other writing is “Swobody! Fabryk! i Ziemi!” which I think means “Liberty! Factories! Land!”, but I will have to check that out with Comrade Jakub.

Nothing much exciting happens with New Zealand money. There are no regimes overthrown, massive cases of forgery, drug money or any of those other situations that require currency redesigns in other countries. How many times has the pound sterling been changed? All New Zealand got was the new plastic money with more vivid colours. Right, they can decorate Britomart with those and carry on the gay disco theme.

Last night Ryan had organised a get together of cool people, but due to one reason or another, I was the only cool person who showed up. But that didn’t matter. The coolness that Ryan and I generate when we are in a small room is quite enough. We met up with James and had dinner at the Thai place in Mercury Plaza. I noticed that the chick who took our order wrote it down in Thai, which I found reassuring. We all had Pad Thai, which is the national dish of Thailand. I know this because I read an article about it in the Thai Airways inflight magazine.

Back at Starks bar, we were soon joined by Daniel and Heloise. The topic of conversation went from religion (boring) to politics (boring) then to sexual politics (yeah!). I remember at one stage James reckoned that women would be just as leering and openly pervy as men, if it weren’t for years of social conditioning. I’ve heard other guys make this claim, and it’s interesting, but why not the other way around? It’s nice to think that maybe men only act all pervy because they have been socially conditioned to act in such an overtly masculine way, and that if left to their own devices they’d actually be quietly appreciative of women, like women are of men. Or maybe men are men and women are women and society doesn’t have much influence.

Oh no. It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m talking about sexual politics.

My traditional Valentine’s Day ritual involves turning up the self-loathing dial to 11 and going to see a romantic comedy on my own. I noticed that “Under the Tuscan sun” was on, and that might have been disgustingly fun, but instead I went to the gym and ran for 45 minutes. In the midst of my treadmill session I saw a semi-famous media guy I know. He offered to hook me up with some freelance writing work. It sounds terribly glamourous, yet I suspect I might have to file it away under “not my forte”.

Evan Dando is playing a couple of shows at the Bollix next week. I’m considering going, but I’m not sure if it would be as cool as the three previous Lemonheads gigs I’ve been to. Y’know, it’s been 11 years since the Frank Mills incident (to be explained at a later date), things change.