Eck. What can I write? I feel like there should be something. But today is just another day at home doing housework at procrastinatory intervals. I guess I have to check the sits vac, but I don't expect to find anything there any more, or to have my applications taken seriously if I do. The dole people have not been on my back about finding work (asking me to report, sending me to interviews etc) and I think because I've told them I'm going back to study next year they've decided giving me the benefit for a few months till then can be written off. In one way this is relieving but in another it is discouraging, because they clearly don't expect me to find anything before I go back.

Unemployment in New Zealand is at its lowest level for 16 years.

I still can't get a job.

Today was Jannie's-house-cleaning day. From the notes she leaves, I think she thinks I eat lunch there. I know I'm allowed to help myself from her fridge, but really, when I've just cleaned a kitchen I do not feel like messing it up again to prepare a meal. I just take a Coke. Jannie is the only person I know in New Zealand who actually keeps one-drink bottles or cans of Coke in her fridge on a regular basis. What an American thing to do. It would make her as fat as an American if she didn't smoke like a chimney. Anyway, 'I no compline,' it's nice to sit down with a Coke and one of the gossip magazines she buys more often than my mother does, after I've dealt with the filth. Prince Charles is in a dreadful pickle. He would have done better to follow Camilla P-B's advice and make no comment; either that or address the situation directly, without trying to avoid mentioning any part of it. You can't do these things halfway and do anyone justice. The sad thing about the statements from people trying to back him up in his denials is that they all resort to phrases like 'He would never stoop so low' which indicate that they see homosexuality as shameful. There's a difference between just wanting to make it clear where you stand, and slagging off the alternative.

I can't say whether I think the unfortunate fellow's claim that he was raped by the Prince's putative lover is true or not. Whether he's messed up because he was raped, or thinks he was raped because he's messed up, or something else, are all things I am not sufficiently informed to judge. But as for the idea of Prince Charlesbeing gay? PSHAW!

I have a schload of housewifey things I'm supposed to do today; cleaning, shopping, roasting a damn chicken, so I suppose I'd better get up and started. I cannot access the Nekomusume.net forums at the moment. Some sort of connection failure, apparently. This vexes me to no end. I was just enlightening an American teenager as to what 'Doctor Who' was. (Hope the post went through and edified you, Kuroyami no Senshi.)

Normally my mother's housewife lists spread the more onerous tasks across the week, so it's clean the bathrooms Monday, vacuum the floors Tuesday, and so on, but she seems to have decided it must all be done today which is a bit of a punch. And ironing. Waah! Ironing! Oh well.

All I Want For Christmas (in no particular order)
- Extended edition Two Towers on DVD
- Something with Samurai Jack on it - do they do tin lunchboxes? A bento box with matching chopsticks would be even cooler
- More Kodocha: Sana's Stage and the last volume of Marmalade Boy (in English, I mean)
- Sun on Christmas day
- Not to receive underwear, ornaments or jewellery for my grandmother, who prides herself on not looking at anyone's wish lists and consequently misses my preferences by a mile.

Actually, who am I kidding, there's heaps of stuff I'd like for Christmas. See my Amazon wish list for details.