If I were you my friend, I'd wear your dress and steal your friends...



I love these two. If I ever have twins, I'll name them Calvin and
Hobbes. Or perhaps Shake and Vac. Although Cheech and Chong would also
work.

I had Tikka Masala for dinner, and now my stomach is doing wee flip
flops. I need to go home and have a shot of Gaviscon, but first I have
to get my Shit Sorted. Yes, it merits upper case.

I'm stalking someone. (Well, he lives in another city, but I'm stalking
him via the internets. Apparently googling someone three times in one
day is stalking, according to Matty.)
I'm completely in love with him and want to have his babies.
But I was really well behaved and didn't snog him, or get really drunk
and embarras myself, or anything untoward. I was such a good girl I can
barely believe it.

Which was probably not the best idea, because shortly before leaving
the country is a really good time to be extremely naughty, so really I
should have just snogged him and been done with it. Oh Botheration.

Please wish me luck tomorrow cos I'm going to my big scary interview with these fullas, so hopefully I won't come up with anything like "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".

Note to self: keep feet well clear of mouth.

Back to the stalking....

(insert "Jaws" music here)

So the time is getting near.
Five weeks and one day.
Me and my Moo Boots are sitting here trying to get a big pile of stuff done, and beginning to freak out a little about the fact that IM ABOUT TO LEAVE MY HOME FOR ABOUT SIX YEARS TO MOVE TO NOT ONLY ANOTHER COUNTRY BUT ANOTHER WHOLE FUCKING HEMISPHERE!!!
Everything will be backward in America.
It will be winter at Christmas. What about BBQs and water fights and Boxing Day picnics and drinking beer in the sun and getting a sunburnt nose on Christmas day? The water will go down the plug the opposite way. (I tried this in Greece. True.) They will be driving on the wrong side of the road (again, nearly got myself killed a gazillion times in Greece. Yes, even after living there for five months). They talk funny. (If anyone tells me that my accent is "so cute" I swear right now I will punch that fucker square in the face).

The thing that prompted the Oh-MiGod-its-actually-time-to-stop-talking-and-start-doing freakout was the fact that my email address is now set up.

So, should the urge strike you, feel free to email me at my new address: canewcom@syr.edu
You know, just in case my Canterbury address doesn't measure up, or if my two gmail accounts seem insufficient, or if hotmail is having a bad day (like everyday).

I'm not inviting spam here, all student email addresses at Syracuse are public anyway, they are posted on the University's website. But if you do spam me, or send any of those "send this to three friends and your wish will come true and some poor starving child in Bangladesh will get a roast chicken and Bill Gates will give a primary school in Ethiopia a gazillion dollars" fucking chain emails, then you will automatically recieve the same treatment as the "Your accent is so cute" guy.

Also, Batman Begins is fucking awesome.

Moo Boots

I went out yesterday with the intention of merely driving a friend to
Internal Affairs to drop off some passport documentation, and coming
straight back to work. Next thing you know, we're at the shopping mall
trying on shoes, and I fell in love with these babies. Yes, I'm wearing
them now, and as I told my niece this morning I plan on wearing them
until the day I die. They'll have to bury me in them.

Moo.

My trip to Dunedin, in photos.

Well here we are, en route to sunny Dunedin for the 40th annual Foreign
Policy School. Notice that I am not, in fact, speeding. In spite of my
sexy bitch of a car, I am not, at this point in time, speeding.
Because speeding is bad.


Here she is, the Little Blue Beastie. I'm going to be a sad bean when I have
to sell her in a few weeks. She has a new water pump AND a new cam belt
(thats the big rubber band that spins around, just in front of the oil
testing thing).
Whos a spoilt little beastie then?
Heres Bianca, cooking stuff.

I stayed at this flat. Bianca and Greg's flat. Although, I did have to share my bed with this guy.


The infamous George, who it appears has just been busted going through my
handbag. Sneaky little fucker. He seemed a little put out he had to
share his bed, but after the second night he was getting used to it.


This is the Fortune Theatre. It has nothing to do, whatsoever, with the
conference, but its pretty. Notice also that the sun is shining. This
doesn't happen very often in Dunedin in the winter. I feel privileged
to witness it.


Here are the remnants of my lunch. Fascinating stuff, I know. They fed us
pretty well, which is good considering how drunk they got us on the
Friday night.
Here are the people learning.


You can just feel the knowledge eminating from them, can't you. There was
one guy who was very interesting, talking about the wording of the
Millennium Development Goals and how the sneaky old UN have changed the
wording from the original declaration at the World Food Summit in Rome
in 1996, so they have made their jobs easier. Instead of declaring they
would halve world poverty by 2015, they changed it to halving the
proportion of population living in poverty, and then backdating it to
1990, so that in reality, taking into account the base year, and
intricacies of proportion vs. percentage, the UN only has to acheive
something like a 20% reduction in poverty, as opposed to the 50% the
wording implies.
We all thought he was a bit clever.

Heres the pizza we ate on Saturday night while watching the All Blacks KICK
SOME LIONS ARSE!!!! Fucking Brits. You've got four countries at your
disposal, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales; a population that
exceeds our measly four million by god-only-knows, and still, YOU GOT
NOTHING!!!
Suck it down, you colonising punks.


Heres Charlie in the Octagon. I love Charlie. Every day is a fun day when
Charlie's around. You should have seen the look on that phone box when he was
finished with it. Phew!


Here is some funky sky, just north of Hampton.

Sunset at Makikihi. Theres some cows there as well, an animal I am most fond
of. But you can hardly see them in this photo, so forget I said
anything.

This is my favourite photo of this lot. Very late sunset just north of
Ashburton (commonly referred to as "Vegas" and the town who until
recently had the dubious honour of the highest suicide rate per capita
in the world).
I nearly got mashed by a big fuck-off truck getting out of the car to take this photo, so I'm glad it turned out so well.

Right then.

Back to it.

More photos to come. Maybe.

Thank you Tara for the photobucket suggestion. I'll be sure to mention you in my acceptance speech. What name would you like to go under?

Oh Woe is Me

Where are you all?
Zach Braff has got 1532 comments on his last post.
I got nowt.

Yes, I know hes a bit more famous than me.

Perhaps I should start saying really controversial things to get people angry, then they would comment.
George Bush is not the devil!!!

No, only kidding, spreading untruths is no way to get comments. Or friends.

I was considering doing a photo essay of my day, until I realised how thoroughly boring that would be.

9am: get to office. Have cup of tea. Check emails. Read blogs. (this is about as interesting as it gets)
9.30am: start working at computer.
12.30pm: have lunch. Most often still at computer.
2.30pm: have another cup of tea. Stare at computer some more.
3.30ishpm: read blogs some more. Check emails again.
7pm: Heres where it gets really interesting. Some days I'll go home now, other days I'll stay here and work for a few more hours. Variety being the spice of life and all.....

Only for six more weeks, and then I'm off (next week's visa interview going to plan) to New York.
Alert the authorities. And the liquor suppliers.....

I have just been preparing my first lecture for Other University, and you will be pleased to know that in one slide show, I have included Kate, Sawyer (mmmm), Sayid, Locke and Jack from "Lost", Jackie Chan, Eric Cartman, George W Bush, Tony Blair, Helen Clark and Obi Wan Kenobi.
I amaze even myself.

Pretty girls...



This morning I had a beautiful girl in my bed.




Oh yes, its true.




I took pictures.





They're coming.....




She's really gorgeous....





I think I'm in love.





You're thinking some pretty filthy things aren't you.....




Well don't.





Cos here she is.



Had you going there for a minute, didn't I?.....

Wee tart stole my teddy bear.  

Is there a particular knack to posting a picture in the middle of a post, without having to go back and forth and make it all different posts?
I'm fully aware of the fact that I'm not quite the sharpest knife in the drawer, but really, it can't be that hard? Or can it?

Here she is. Yay.  

A Bit a Culcha

Last night I went to the orchestra. The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, to be precise. It was all very civilised, especially when the orchestra came on stage, and I jumped up and yelled so my cousin would get really embarrassed. She plays in the orchestra, you see.
Here she is (attempts to post a picture)
Ummm....Still getting the hang of this picture thing....
OK so we'll do it this way.

The shortest post. Ever.

Funny.

Not a complete waste of a Sunday

You know how sometimes, you just keep writing and writing and you're wondering to yourself "Where the fuck am I going with this, it has absolutely nothing to do with the first half of the chapter, but gosh its interesting" and then the next minute it somehow manages to wriggle its way back to the original point and not only have you suceeded in making a really good point but you now have a highly relevant and original and interesting example to prove said point?

Its cool when that happens.

I just managed to link a chapter on the economic causes of civil conflict in Asia Pacific and the World Bank's role therein, with the government of Papua New Guinea and their less than responsible position on resource extraction, with the recent termination of the Bank's Forestry and Conservation project in PNG, with a rather ham-fisted reintegration project in Cambodia, with the Trust Fund for East Timor.
And if you want to read it, you'll just have to wait until the book gets published.

MWAAA HAAAA HAAAAA!!!!!

Also, given my tendancies to have the occasional rant about things that I am interested in (read: things that bore most people's knickers off) I'm sure there are those who were expecting a rant about this.
Its coming. I'm waiting to see what happens at the G8.
And I haven't even mentioned Wolfowitz yet.

Saturday, 2.27pm

I have been in my office for about two hours already, and I don't think I've achieved anything. I spent about half an hour playing with my camera, taking pictures of the view out the window (grey and uninteresting) and of my screen saver (the Matrix code) and playing with all the buttons on the camera that change the depth of field and exposure (is it still exposure when theres no film to be exposed?) so try and figure out what each one does, but I just succeeded in wasting time and neither learning anything about my camera nor getting an interesting picture.
I ate some gnocchi that was leftover from last night's dinner. Quite nice, but really could have used a healthy dose of blue cheese.
I read some blogs.
I rearranged my office.
I emptied the contents of my handbag out onto the desk a) to see if there was anything interesting in there (not really) and b) with the intention of cleaning out the extraneous (and as it turns out not particularly interesting) matter dwelling within. I didn't. I just stuffed it all back in.
I made a cup of tea. And drank it. I think I could go another.
I put moisturiser on my legs. Pretty tricky when one is wearing their Saturday-in-June best of woolly socks, cosy trackpants and polypropylene.

I feel like I should be working though, because the rest of my family is at home (home being my sister's house) digging stuff up and building retaining walls and generally being all landscape-gardenery. And I said I couldn't help because I have so much work to do.
And I really do have the most ridiculous amount of work to do. I know for sure I won't get any done next weekend, because I'll be here.

OK. Time to do it.
As the man said: Do it.

writing stuff, writing stuff, look at me, im writing stuff.....

Update: 479 words. The good news is I'm pretty sure they all make sense and can therefore stay. The bad news is that there's only 479 of them. Oh well, its Saturday.

In other news, the White Stripes' "Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground" is a fucking awesome song.

Would you believe this woman is a high school teacher?  

OK so now this is turning into Claire's greatest hits. Or not. The Goblin is responsible for this beauty of a shot.  

Tash is a bunny.  

This is me again. I look a bit pissed here. Honestly officer, I had one beer! Nice red nose, Claire 

This is my favourite painting. I think you should all look at it. I also have the fridge magnet version, thank you Hester.  

Check it out!!!

I can post pictures!!!! Yay. Or not, depending on the subject of the picture.
Yes, I know, everybody else in the universe knows how to post pictures, but this is a bit of an achievement for yours truly.
Oh, the hours I will be wasting....

Note: when I am logged into Hello to post pictures, I get no auditory love from Media Player. Anybody know how to fix this? In English please, I don't speak Geek.

Please ignore the above re: media player going boink.

I would delete it, but then the comments would make no sense, and then I'd have to change them, and I've forgotten my haloscan password, and its all a bit much for me on a Friday. I'm going to have dinner with my friend now and go and see Mr and Mrs Smith.
Booyakasha.

Well, here I am. At the rugby.  

Vroom Vroom....

Or not, as the case may be.

There are some serious car demons going around at the mo.
Take my mighty blue beast. Its leaking water. Not particularly serious, I know, but when you're a) driving to Dunedin next weekend, b) driving to Wanaka soon after that, c) live on a hill and d) planning on selling the beast in a month or so, this is not good. Hopefully it won't cost exorbitant amount to fix.
I'm doing better than my sister. She took her car for a warrant on Monday, and it passed with flying colours. Not a prob. Two days later, it makes a funny sound for a few minutes, and then dies.
Deader than Elvis. As fucked as a two dollar whore. Deader than a dead thing that just died. As much use as a truckload of dead rats at a tampon factory. Demonstrating about as much life as Michael Jackson's singing career. As screwed as Paris Hilton.
I think you get the picture.
As for my dad? Well he bought a new car about six weeks ago. Very pretty and shiny, but unfortunately it has developed a rather disturbing odour of burning plastic whenever it is running. And now is sitting in the garage waiting for Mercedes to get their shit together to either fix or replace it.
Perhaps as a collective we have done something to piss off the Car Gods (Toyotus, Mercedium, Hondaria and Big boss Motherfucking god of things that run on Wheels). Perhaps the planet is trying to tell us to stop mining her precious oil resources and invent a car that runs on hydrogen, or dead leaves, or poo.
Or maybe the universe just hates us for being so damn good-looking!!!

Yeah, that'll be it.

Hester, this is a challenge.

This is how much of a nerd I am

Apparently I have Merit.

Well, not so much me, but my thesis. Its not official yet, but hey.
I don't think thats too bad for someone who worked one job mostly full time for the whole time I wrote it, and two jobs for a goodly portion. Plus, I never did Honours in political science either, so I'm just going to say that I rock.
Yes Nic beat me and got Distinction.
I have a nicer car though.

Its all a bit silly at the moment cos I've got a really snotty cold and its in my ears (the cold, not the snot) and I've gone a bit deaf and I've got more work to do than there are daylight hours in the day.
Also I've nearly convinced myself that it is completely within the realm of wisdom to fly up to Wellington in the evening, see Interpol (in all their magnificent awesomeness), fly back the next morning, spend a couple of hours with the whanau, and fly out to New York that afternoon. I even called my mum to check that she wouldn't be too pissed off at me for spending my last night in NZ in Wellies seeing a band who are from the city I'm flying to the next day. She was completely cool with it.
So yes, its a bit silly, and I have to go now and look after the wee people.
Silly silly silly.

Also, that thing what I wrote has merit! Woohoo!!

HoooooLeeeeee Faaaaaaaaaaacccckkkk!!!!!!

Within 48 hours I will know my thesis mark.
Ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck.

I'm off now, to check my scholarship offer from Syracuse, to see if actually having a Masters is a condition for acceptance.

Friday, 11.04pm

I should be drunk by now.
Back in the day, I would be at someone's impromptu party talking shit, or out at a bar catching up with my friends, or dancing up a storm at some random place. But no. Those happy days are gone.
(Man, I sound like an old grouch, don't I?)
I've finally finished everything on my list for Friday, which is such a nice feeling of satisfaction. I love being able to cross off everything on the list, and I need lists, because I'm such a scatterbrain. Perhaps there's a blonde under all this red, just dying to get out.
One of the things on my list (that I've done, did I mention that?) was to write the essay questions for this course I'm helping to teach. I thought it would be a drag, but it was quite cool. Yes, I'm a geek, I know. It was a bit of an eye-opener as to all the interesting things that one day I hope to teach (once I've saved the world, of course) and demonstrated the depth of all things political sciencey. (Yes, its a word) Even such a simple thing as an introductory course requires so much information and its going to be a battle for us to get through it in six weeks, but I'll do my best. And no doubt lay The Grammar And Punctuation Smackdown (tm) on those slackers that managed to make it through high school without learning the difference between a conjunction and an adverb.
Haha!! Fear the wrath of The Claire and her quest for academic perfection!!
There's lots of brackets in today's post.
I had my six year old niece jump into my bed at 6.30 am for cuddles. Well, under the guise of cuddles, but really she wanted to be entertained until it was actually time to get up. So, I drifted in and out of sleep until 7am while she chatted to herself.
I am getting to be truly awesome at mastering the art of the Excel Graph. Well, when I say "awesome" I mean "it only takes a few tries until I can do it". Which is a vast improvement on "fucking do it you cunty bastard computer or you're going out the window". usually followed by "Tim!! Help!!" Today I made pies. Pie chart pies, not steak and cheese pies. Someone in NZ is going to have to send me a steak and cheese pie every week when I'm in NY.
Pies is a great word.
So is shower. And justification.
The screen is starting to swim. Wait, maybe its me. Uh oh.
Time for beddy byes.
Have a super weekend.

The lengths that I will go to....

This time around I really do have better things to do with my time. Oh well.
Things that have happened in the last few days:
...or, Stuff Claire has been doing.
The first in a new series.

-Marking essays. Really, the idea of a possessive apostrophe can't be foreign to EVERY SINGLE STUDENT, can it? Evidence suggests otherwise.
-Getting asked to co-teach a course at another university. Oh yeah, everybody wants a piece. The fun part is, the course starts on July 4th. I leave on August 4th. Luckily my esteemed colleague will do the second half. I just have to mark 60 essays in the week before I depart these shores. Piece of piss.
-Attempting to plan lectures and tutorials for said course at Other University.
-Listening to Bob Dylan.
-Making fun stuff like graphs and frequency tables and attempting to write another chapter for a book. Not that I've done the first chapter either... oopsy daisy.
-Moving into my sister's house for the eight weeks before I go. Upside: lots of cuddles from my nieces (my nephew is 10, and therefore thinks he's too cool and grown up for cuddles). Downside: can't roll in blind drunk at 5am.
-Making plans to go to Auckland for an interview for my visa. Which I think is a bit silly. I'd quite happily sign a piece of paper declaring that I'm not a terrorist or a threat to "National Security" (tm), and its going to cost several hundred dollars to get there. Auckland is fucking miles away.
-Being cold. It was -4 this morning, and today is expected to get to a whopping 7 degrees. Tropical.
-Changing the sign on Boss Man's office door so it reads "Professor Darth Surnamegoeshere".
-Procrastinating about all the work I must do. Gotta stop that.

You would think I had better things to do with my time.

You scored as Padme Amidala. Padme Amidala 78% General Grievous 64% Anakin Skywalker 64% Yoda 61% Darth Vader 56% Chewbacca 53% Mace Windu 53% Obi Wan Kenobi 44% C-3PO 44% R2-D2 36% Clone Trooper 31% Emperor Palpatine 25% Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

What kind of magic spell to use?....

Dum de doo....
Nothing much is going on really, I just have a compulsion to blog.
The weirdest thing pissed me off the other day. I was in the shower, and my flatmate has this conditioner that's especially for hair which is dry at the ends and oily at the scalp.
And so, I started shouting at it. I mean, what a stupid product. If your hair is dry at the ends, wash it less. If its oily at the roots, brush it more, so the oil gets distributed evenly, and solves that whole dry-end thing as well.
I mean really. How dumb.

Also the other night, possibly Monday, I had a full on, realistic, scary-as-all-fuck nightmare. I woke up screaming. It was all Amityville Horror like, but the scary part was that I didn't know I was dreaming. Sometimes I do. All I knew was that if I could scream I would be ok, cos it would prove the ghosts and monsters and assorted beasties didn't have control over me, and I could get away.
So I screamed. And woke myself up with the noise. Phew.

And thats all I got today. Sorry.
Aside from
a) nine weeks today, and
b) there is no way that Superman could beat Wolverine. Nobody can beat Wolverine. Ever. Its common knowledge. (among people who are cooler than you. Or geekier.)