Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the world's most disturbing dog toy... the Kong.



How weird is that?

(Note: our couch looks totally ghetto in that photo. It looks better than that normally. I promise.)

What the hell, Michael King?

How awful.

Elvis is playing Memphis in April. No, not *that* Elvis. *My* Elvis. At a club. Doing two shows a night. For two nights. I love Memphis. I love Elvis. I love clubs. I love double-header shows.

I am in New Zealand.

Brent and I, we hurt. Deeply.

The cool thing about tribute bands is that they're the ultimate crowd-pleaser. 2.5 hours of Smiths greatest hits! As Brent says, if the *real* Smiths reformed there'd be no way they'd pander so much to all of us. Last night was a combination of extreme hilarity and, dare I say it, rockingness! The Salford Lads Club are a really good, tight band! 'Johnny Marr' looked a little too much like an Inspiral Carpet, and 'Morrissey' had a big shiny bald patch, but they made up for their costuming issues by copping as many mannerisms as possible. There were only a few songs which didn't quite hit the mark - 'How Soon Is Now?' was a bit lacking in the 'searing guitar riff' department - but most of them were near-perfect copies, particularly the fast-moving jangly ones. Nick kept urging Rach and I to yell out 'we love you, Tribute Morrissey!' as he threw mums into the crowd, but Lawrence was the true inspiration, staging the first of many amusing crowd stage invasions to hug TM. We arrived very stoned and got soberer, while Rach arrived very sober and got drunker, which made for some interesting developments as the night continued. I, for example, was not expecting to hear every word of 'Still Ill' sung with such weepy passion in my ear. ;) Then again, I wasn't expecting such a warm fuzzy crowd, either - on songs like 'Panic', 'Ask', or 'There is a Light That Never Goes Out' TM was practically drowned out by the voices of the cheerfully bopping folk down below, many of whom were clearly British expats. I saw a few old acquaintances and workmates, too. From, like, 1996. (God, I feel old.) If it's not love, then it's the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that will bring us together...

Two things added entertainment value: we were standing behind this weird boxy wotsit, presumably a minimalist seating/drink-holding combination, about thigh-height and quite wide, which gave the impression that there was a big open space in front of us. I can't count how many times someone coming from the bar tried to edge past us only to bang painfully into it. Yeah, we're just leaving this enormous space in front of us especially for *you*, my friend! I am cruel. But it was funny. The second thing is a story Lawrence told about a show he saw at the same venue, a double bill of (his friends) the Tokey Tones and the Brunettes. It was a Back to the Future-themed night, and a Brunettes band member pretended to cut his hand, while Lawrence got up on stage and asked if anyone could play guitar. Liam Finn came out of the crowd for the obligatory 'Johnny B. Goode', with full knee-sliding solo frenzy. Lawrence said the bizarre thing was that only about 12 people in the audience got the joke. To me, that's almost funnier than if it had gone over hugely. Love it!

Oh yeah, the funeral sucked. Just thought you all should know. My aunt and I both went to be support people for my mother, and both of us cried because *she* cried. Fine, upstanding crew, aren't we?

Tonight I am going to see a Smiths tribute band with Nick and Rach and Hannah and Brent (and Lawrence, independently). I'm expecting it to be quite hilarious.

I feel so lame. My mother is so upset about Beryl and I can't do anything to make her feel better. She's like a little tense, sad bird and I'm this big galumphing puppy making cups of tea and stupid jokes. I went to the garden centre with her and we bought potted daisies and ground cover succulents, and she and Brent and I watched The Jewel in the Crown on UKTV and the first episode of Ken Burns' Civil War (cheering stuff!), and she has a cough and has put her back out and is miserable and is still being brave and doing her best to be cheerful and I am utterly, utterly impotent and pathetic, and the funeral is Tuesday. God. I came home and cried and threw the ball for the dog for ages in the dark, just to feel like I was achieving something.

Per Brent's concerned suggestion, I will smoke pot and eat toast with vegemite and vanilla peach jam, and watch the third Beatles Ed Sullivan show, and tomorrow I will go back to being a little more impersonal on the blog. OK. Plan in place. Action stations.

Serious consideration for the future: moving out of Auckland altogether. Yikes.

I'm not sure whether Sorted is the worst website in the world or the best. It certainly reigns in your grandiose financial plans, taking you firmly by the shoulders and saying 'look, just because a bank *will* lend you this much to buy a house doesn't mean you *should* borrow this much. Particularly because if you do, you will never be able to afford to go on holiday anywhere ever again, and you will have no retirement savings and no financial leeway and you will never be able to get your wisdom teeth out (crucial issue!) or replace your (currently eleven-year-old) car, much less get another one and maintain it. Oh, and forget about children. Even if you were a little up in the air about them to begin with, you can't afford to feed and clothe them and give them piano lessons, so you might as well get your tubes tied now.'

As you may have gathered, it's a tough-love kind of website. Particularly for people who are terrible with money. Like us.

My mother's friend Beryl died. (I talked about her before: she greeted her terminal illness diagnosis with a great deal of black humour and panache.) She was actually in California at the time, taking her daughter and grandson to Disneyland - as she said, why sit in your house waiting to die? Of course, now her daughter - who has never been further away from home than Australia - has to bring her mother's body home from a foreign country, all the while dealing with the demands of a grief-stricken eight year old. Bloody awful.

(I suppose Disneyland and surrounds are the kinds of places where people die quite a lot - all those people travelling there as a kind of last hoorah. Odd to think of it.)

Yesterday, I officially dropped out of my Ph.D.

I feel a bit weird about it.

Ellie's favourite toy is a red soccer ball.



My favourite handbag is a pink fifties number.



We like colours.

Another to add to the 'if you could travel back in time to see a show' list: Jackie Wilson. I was listening to 'Work Out' this morning on my long, long, long, LONG commute (curse you upwardly mobile fucking students with your one car each! Doesn't anyone catch the BUS anymore like a normal poverty-stricken wannabe-BA? And why aren't there any more gaggles of Sally-Army-clothes-wearing carpooling people tearing around the 'burbs in a Morrie one thou, for that matter? Young people today! Whoops, tangent got away on me there) and I think I love him.

This is wonderfully weird. I don't know what it means or what's 'supposed' to happen, but I keep playing it over and over. I love Japanese stuff!

I don't care if everyone else thought the Oscars was boring. It's probably the first and last time that New Zealand and New Zealanders themselves will get so many props in Hollywood. I was saying the other day that about 1 percent of the total population of the country worked on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which - if you cut out those under 15 and over 65 - is a significant portion of the working-age population. And again, I was glad to be seeing the ceremony at home rather than in the USA, where I would have been a weepy idiot just to hear so many familiar accents.

I've been singing Peter Jackson's praises for more than a decade. He has no idea who I am, but I feel sort of vindicated. :)