Here's something about New Zealand that's driving me nuts: anti-Asian racism. Yeah, sure, it's difficult to deal with someone who doesn't speak English very well, but can you imagine how hard and frustrating life is for *them*? 75% of the people I enrol at the library speak English as a second language, and they seem unfailingly pleasant and polite to me, despite the barriers against them... so what's the problem?

There shouldn't be one. This is xenophobia, plain and simple. Very uncool.

Oh, I forgot to mention my favourite recent conversation with my mother. The Osbournes started here a few weeks ago and I was asking my mother if she knew who Ozzy was. 'Yes!' she said proudly. 'He's an Englishman on drugs!'

So true, so true...

I'm not sure whether it's funnier to have The Osbournes completely uncensored, as they are here, or to have them bleeping away madly as they do in the US. Sometimes the extent of the bleeps is in itself comedic.

Brent is here. I'm so relieved.

Brent was meant to arrive today at 6am and thanks to the inefficiency that is United (and the limited number of flights to New Zealand every day), he now doesn't get here until 24 hours later. Piffle. Plus, working at the library is leaving me very little time to actually *do* anything, especially blog. No internet access except on breaks, either! (Thanks to a staff member a few months back downloading porn while on the checkout desk, I hear. Um, thanks, dude. You couldn't control yourself for a few hours until you got home?)

Excitement: the film festival begins tomorrow!!! Check out this link to see the full extent of the joy - the documentaries and repertory stuff especially. I've narrowed myself down to 18 films in a two-week period, including not one, but *two* silents with full orchestral accompaniment - Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc and (yay!) Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality - in the best theatre in the southern hemisphere, an opulent 1929 movie palace with a twinkling star ceiling and two gold lions with red flashing eyes on either side of the stage. Now, if Brent ever gets here I will be almost content. I just need a dog. And a flat. And a TV and a washing machine. And one of those heaters with the fake glowing coals. I *must* have one of those.

Latest funny, funny, incredibly funny thing that our friend Gary did: well, actually you need backstory. Gary won several free tickets to a quite disturbing show at the Woodlands in Houston - the bill included Cheap Trick (yay, yes, 'mommy's all right, daddy's all right, they just seem a little weeeeeeeeird...', but it gets worse), Bad Company, Foreigner, and (gah!) Night Ranger, among others. The outdoor show was timed perfectly for an enormous summer thunderstorm, so naturally the Woodlands Pavilion's outdoor area was a mudbath. Covered in mud from head to toe, Gary, in the midst of a group of rocking toothless bikers dressed in overalls, realised the potential of said mud and did a full Al Jolson impersonation, singing 'Mammy'. I love him *so* much right now, and I didn't even see it. This may even beat the time he got to his feet and cried dramatically: '*I* am Spartacus!' during a Tom Petty show... I really miss Gary, actually. He is an *inspired* kind of crazy.