Should old acquaintance be forgot...

So that's it, kiddies, 2012 is just about done and dusted!  It's not been a bad one, as far as years go.  It's had its ups and downs, but I'd give it a solid eight and a half.

I know it's traditional at this time of year to come up with a list of New Years Resolutions, things you want to accomplish in the coming twelve months.  Goddess knows I've written enough of them myself over the years, most of which have never made it out of week one, so this year I've decided to do things a little differently.  Rather than write resolutions for myself, I'm going to write them for other people.

This should suit me to a tee.  I get to combine my love of coming up with resolutions I have no plan to follow through on with my love of telling other people what to do.  It's win-win!

So here's what I think should be at the top of these resolution lists.

Kristen Stewart:  It might be a good idea to try to not 'have relations' with your director again this year.  In fact, lets just widen that net to anyone you're not actually in a relationship with, okay? 

Lance Armstrong:  Might be time to take up professional wrestling?  I hear they don't mind the drugs so much. 

Kevin Clash aka Elmo:  Just because you play a monster child on TV, that doesn't make it okay to date in that demographic.  How about sticking to the half your age plus seven rule, huh? 

Hulk Hogan:  Don't sleep with anyone else's wife.  Or if you absolutely must, try to refrain from taping it.  That shit always ends up on TMZ. 

Lindsay Lohan:  Umm ... lets see ... you know what?  How about we just go with remembering to turn up to work, huh?  Small steps, Lindsay, small steps.

Happy New Year, everyone!  Lets hope that 2013 is as awesome as we can possibly make it!

Does TIME Magazine really have the power to do that...

Apparently TIME Magazine now have the power to decide what words we can use and what ones we have to remove completely from our vocabularies.

Uhhh ... what the fuck?

And who, may I ask, gave you the power to do that, TIME Magazine?  I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with the idea of a bunch of list writing journalists deciding whether or not I'm allowed to use the sentence "His criticism of the latest mommy-porn novel was totes amazeballs".  I can't be restricted to your narrowly defined concept of the English language, TIME!  I'm a unique snowflake, and my language must reflect that!

Fascists!

Oh, who am I kidding, I completely agree that there are a few words out there that could stand to be removed from the font of human knowledge ... but not amazeballs.  Sometimes that's the only word I can find that truly describes the sheer awesomeness of something I'm watching/eating/reading/experiencing.  Don't take that away from me, TIME, I'm begging you!

Still, I think there are a few words you missed.

Moist:  Unless you're talking about a chocolate cake, the word moist only serves one purpose, and that seems to be to make me cringe.  It's just ... ugh, no.  Just no. 

Hipster:  Maybe if we just stop talking about them, they'll go away?  Sorry, I know it's mean of me, but I'm a fangirl.  We're the natural enemy of the hipster.  Kind of like the Roadrunner and Wile-E-Coyote (I'll leave it up to you to work out which is which). 

Blowback:  According to Wikipedia, the definition of this is "unintended consequences of a covert operation that are suffered by the civil population of the aggressor government".  But what I hear is "unintended consequences suffered by Bambi in the film Big Boobs IV when the 'money shot' went a little awry".   

Like:  Like, I hate it when, like, someone just, like, keeps putting the word like into, like, every sentence they say.  Don't you, like, hate that too? 

Gullible:  Come on, we all fell for that joke at least once in our childhoods.  Wouldn't you like to finally have sweet, sweet justice?  I know I would.

No, don't thank me TIME Magazine, I'm just doing your job for you.  You're welcome.

Oh the fun you can have with a mannequin hand...

I'm not one of those people who ever win anything.  Seriously, I could buy 99 tickets out of a 100 ticket lottery, and as sure as eggs, the bastard who bought the other ticket would win the pot.  Over the years I've bought lotto tickets, scratch-it tickets, raffle tickets, and keno tickets, but the most I've ever walked away with was the odd twenty bucks.  Simply put, I'm not lucky.

So you can imagine my delighted surprise when I found out a little while back that I'd won a giveaway that Valerie was running over at her blog Valerie Nunez and the Flying Platypi.  Like I said, I never win anything, so the fact that I was chosen for this one was amazing, cause I really really wanted what she was giving away.

Want to know what it is?  Well, take a look at this baby!

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you all to Pinky Tuscadero, so named because she has a pinky (obviously), and because I firmly believe she'd make out with The Fonz if given half a chance.  She's a bit of a strumpet.

Valerie sent her with a along with a Congratulations On Your New Baby Hand card, and a Sad Keanu, who will from this point on be taking up residence on the corner of my computer monitor.

Gypsy the Feline Dictator was a little reticent at first, she doesn't like having her power base threatened, but after Pinky showed that she was well versed in the chin scratching arts Her Royal Catness thawed a little.

But of course, there's no room for layabouts at Casa del Kellie ... well no more room, Gypsy has that one sewn up ... so the day after she arrived I took her into the library with me and put her to work.

It turns out she's not such a hot typist.  When I complained, she kept saying that her fingers don't move, so it's unreasonable of me to expect her to do 100 words per minute.  Excuses, excuses.

So then I decided to try her with some paperwork, but I have to say, her handwriting was rubbish.

She did a bit better when I asked her to get me a cuppa.  Looks like we've found a niche for her!  Welcome to the company, Pinky the Tea Lady!

Thank you so much, Valerie!  I'm sure Pinky is going to make an excellent addition to my workplace. I've been telling people I needed a hand with my job for ages!

Have yourself a merry little Christmas...

Merry Christmas, my lovelies!

I hope you all have a fantabulous day with your nearest and dearest, eating way too much and encouraging materialism in the next generation by buying them oodles and oodles of presents!

And for your listening/viewing pleasure, here's "The Twelve Days of Christmas" by Straight, No Chaser, a college a cappella group.  Seriously, it's the funniest version of the song I've ever seen ... and who among us can honestly say they haven't branched off into other songs while singing this one.

Have a good one, guys!

Christmas Giveaway: And the winners are...

The Hat Of Fate has spoken, and the winners of the two e-copies of "Ricochet" by Xanthe Walter are Sarah at Misfits Vintage and Kianwi at Simply She Goes!

Congrats, guys!  You're going to love it!

I'll email you the link to go download your book, have fun over the Christmas break with your naughty, saucy, rumpty pumpty adult type novel!

Wow, I'm really talking up the erotica factor, aren't I ... and for some reason sounding more than a little like Benny Hill while doing it.

Don't worry, it's a real book with real storylines and everything, not just a bunch of highly unlikely sexual encounters strung together by even more unlikely plot contrivances.  If you're anything like me you'll be half in love with at least four of the characters by the time you're finished it.

And for anyone else who's curious, and over the age of 18, you can go read the first 14 chapters of "Ricochet" here!

Ah, just call me smutty Santa.  Santa Smut?  Smutty Claus?

Wow, this alter ego thing is hard.  I don't know how Clark Kent does it.

Twenty four hours and counting...

It's almost time, folks!  The Apocalypse is only hours away, so it's time for us to start getting our plan ready.

What plan, you ask?

Well, if you've been visiting me for a while you may recall a post I made back in September where I came up with a game plan for the Mayan Apocalypse.  Go on and read it, we'll all wait.

All done?  Good.

So, are we all agreed?  From this point on, we all act like the Apocalypse happened.  The next generation are never going to know it's all a pack of thinly veiled lies, provided we all stick to the game plan.  So in preparation for this, I think it would be a good idea if we all prepared a little.

Come up with your stories before hand, or at least some bullet points you can refer to, so you're ready when sceptical youngsters start to question you about what really happened.  Remember, there's no such thing as too outlandish.  You survived the freaking Apocalypse!  If you want to say you single handedly mowed down fifteen zombies with a hot wired SUV, you go right ahead.

Purposely hurting yourself just for the sake of having battle scars is a bit extreme, but by all means come up with some explanations for the ones you already have.  I've got a scar on the back of my ankle, the result of an unfortunate leg-shaving incident, which I'll be telling people came from a run in with a dismembered zombie who clung to my leg with one hand while dragging his severed lower body with the other.  It's a beautiful image, isn't it.

It probably wouldn't hurt if you started perfecting your PTSD responses now.  Practice your haunted, tortured look in the mirror to get just the right amount of angst showing in your eyes.  Try out expressions like "I tried to get to her, tried to get her out, but I just wasn't fast enough" and "At night I can still hear the screaming".  If that doesn't work for you, just go with something like "Sarah?  I knew a Sarah once ... back before..." then sigh deeply.  You can't go wrong with the classics.

Okay then, I think we're ready!

By the way, don't forget to go enter my Silly Season Giveaway for an e-copy of Xanthe Walter's new novel "Ricochet"!

Oh Saint Clare, watch over my TiVo...

Considering I'm not even a Christian, let alone a Catholic, you guys might find my choice of material today strange, but the way I see it, everyone should have the protection of a patron saint.  They're more than just religious figures, they're doing their part to continue the great tradition of superstition and paranoia we've worked so hard a species to build!

The important thing, though, is picking the right saint to align yourself with.  And being the awesome person I am, I've decided to help you all out by suggesting a few of the lesser known saints you might find yourself drawn to!  Why settle for St Anthony or St Jude, when you could have one of the following!

St Clare:  Patron Saint of Television

For anyone who lives and dies by their TV guide, you might want to invest in a statue of St Clare, the patron saint of television.  Hell, get two of 'em and having duelling St Clares on either side of your wide screen!

Can't find the rerun of The Love Boat you're looking for?  Want to know when the next Doctor Who episode is going to air?  Living in fear of your favourite show being cancelled before the two main characters finally kiss?  Just appeal to your St Clare (or duelling St Clares) for a little divine intervention.  It can't hurt!

St Isidore:  Patron Saint of The Internet

Now here's a saint that should be near and dear to all of our hearts.  Good old Isidore, the patron saint of the internet!  How else are you supposed to get a 200 kpbs download rate from your torrents without his help?

So why not print off his picture and stick it to your computer monitor?  With him looking down on you, you'll never go wrong!  Guaranteed protection against viruses, malware and those annoying pop-up ads that you can never get rid of.

Disclaimer:  This is no guarantee that a picture of St Idisore taped to your computer will prevent viruses, malware or pop-up ads.  Get real, dudes, it's just a photo of a dead guy.

St Fiacre:  Patron Saint of STD Sufferers

So there's a patron saint  you should be offering a prayer up to every time you have a one night stand.  Who knew!  Apparently St Fiacre was quite the healer back in the day, and he did such a good job healing all the "unfortunate" diseases that they made him the patron saint of it.

Sorry, Fiacre, that really sucks.  No one wants to be known as the Patron Saint of chlamydia.

So here's an idea, why not pop his picture in your wallet, right next to your emergency condom?  Of course, it's entirely possible any disease prevention will have more to do with the condom than the picture, but why quibble over details.

St Drogo:  Patron Saint of The Ugly

Being the stunning example of humanity that I am, I of course have no need for this particular Saint's assistance, but I wouldn't want to prevent my less aestetically pleasing readers to be disadvantaged.

Yeah ... that's totally why ...

Poor St Drogo, he apparently wasn't the most attractive of individuals, thanks to a disease that disformed him.  So why not stick a picture of him to your mirror to comfort you on those days when bad hair, bad skin, or just general bad looks are plaguing you!  He might not be able to help, but at least you can look at him and be thankful that you're not THAT bad off.  And he's also the patron saint of coffee so bonus!


So these are just a few of lesser known, but no less important, Saints out there!  Consider your options, weigh the pros and cons, then pick your teams, kids!  It's only your eternal soul riding on your decision, so no pressure or anything.

By the way, don't forget to go enter my Silly Season Giveaway for an e-copy of Xanthe Walter's new novel "Ricochet"!

What NOT to get the amateur farmer in your life for Christmas...

I'm all for spoiling one's pets.  God knows, Gypsy the Feline Dictator gets raw chicken and the expensive brand of dry food every day to eat, and her litter box is lined with the pricey flushable kind of litter.

Okay, so the litter is really for my benefit, not hers.  I don't want to be running out to the rubbish bin with a vaguely odorous plastic baggie every time she goes in for a scratch around.

But still, I like to think that as far as owners go, I'm a good one!  Hell, she even had her own couch up until the recent redecoration of my living room (and don't even get me started on the filthy looks I got for tossing it away).  So I think I'm justified in saying that Nieman Marcus have officially lost the plot if they think anyone is actually going to drop a hundred grand on a luxury chicken coop!

I know, right?

Call me crazy, but that seems a little exorbitant for something which could previously be made with some chicken wire and a couple of sheets of corrugated iron!  I'm all for ensuring our feathered friends are well cared for and comfy in their homes, but it seems to me that if it's going to actually cost more than a reasonably priced kit home for a family of four, it's probably too much.

Assuming that the average chicken lays 350 eggs in its lifetime, and that a dozen eggs would set you back about $4 in a supermarket, the poultry palace would have to home 857 chickens before it would have paid for itself!  And that's just to cover the cost of the coop, it doesn't take feed, time, vet costs, etc, into consideration.

Truth be told, I'm not even sure whether a chicken would want to live in that place.  It was apparently modelled after Le Petite Trianon, Marie Antoinette's house in Versailles.  I can't help but think that the French of that era were a little too fond of chopping heads off for any self respecting chicken to feel completely comfortable in it.

By the way, don't forget to go enter my Silly Season Giveaway for an e-copy of Xanthe Walter's new novel "Ricochet"!

Christmas Giveaway: I'll jingle your bells ...

Disclaimer:  Today's post is going to be about adult books.  Yep, that's right, it's going to include a giveaway of naughty, saucy, completely inappropriate novels for those under the age of 18 or those of a modest nature ... okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating a tad, but I just thought I'd err on the side of caution.  Proceed at your own peril.  Here be dragons ... or at least erotic literature.  Just don't say I didn't warn you!

I'm just going to come out and say it.  We're all friends here, we can support each other in these trying times.  So, here goes ... I didn't like Fifty Shades Of Grey.

Yeah, I know. 

It's incredibly frustrating, because I really, really wanted to like it!  I remember back when I still used to work with the books at the library, we'd play a game during shelving.  If one of us were lucky enough to come across a Black Lace novel on our trolley, we had to open it randomly at three different pages and read something out.  It was almost guaranteed that at least two of the three would be something salacious.

Trust me, nothing makes shelving time go faster than talk of heaving breasts and throbbing manhoods.

But no matter how hard I tried to like Fifty Shades, I just couldn't overlook the first person present tense, the blatant irresponsibility shown by the characters, or the overuse of certain exclamations.

So disappointing!  It's no Story of O, that's for sure.

I much preferred Xanthe Walter's "Ricochet" which I just finished the other day.  

I actually feel kind of bad comparing it to Fifty Shades at all, they really are like chalk and cheese.  Xanthe's book gives the reader a healthy, much more realistic picture of a power exchange relationship, something which is definitely lacking in even some of the well written novels of the genre.

I love the way she writes her characters.  They have more than two dimensions, and they aren't defined by their sexual "dynamic".  And perhaps even more importantly, the story is a damned good one!  She doesn't rely on the titillation factor to keep her audience interested.

Here Xanthe sums up her book in her own words, to give you guys an idea of what it's about.

Ricochet is my first original character novel set in the BDSM universe I created in my fanfiction writing. This is a universe where everyone is bisexual, everyone identifies as dom, sub or switch, and BDSM relationships are the norm. 

Matt is an actor on a hit TV show, who struggles when he hears about an upcoming plot line for his character involving the kind of sexual experimentation that he is scared of trying for himself.  Matt has never experienced his own subspace, and longs to be able to let go of his anxiety and OCD behaviour for long enough to enjoy his sexuality. 

Rick is his co-star, a larger-than-life character who is scared of his dom side – for good reason – and skates the surface of his sexual identity, mistaking quantity of sexual experience for quality, and never allowing a sub to get too close, in case he hurts them.  This is a dom who doesn't trust himself – so how can he ask a sub to trust him? 

They are a traditional 'odd couple', who bicker, tease and play-fight without realizing they are crazy in love with each other – something that is obvious to all around them! 

During the course of the novel they go on a journey, and they both have to confront parts of themselves that make them uncomfortable, and overcome various personal challenges.   

There is a colourful cast of supporting characters too – plus a couple of bad guys who make sure that the course of true love doesn't run too smoothly! 

You can find out more about Ricochet (and read the first fourteen chapters!) on my website at www.xanthewalter.com.

So, in honour of the Silly Season, I've decided to give away two electronic copies of Ricochet.  The lucky winners will get a code that they can enter over at Smashwords to claim their copy.  It's available in just about every format you can imagine, including ePub, PDF and word documents, so no matter how you want to read it you'll be able to.

If you'd like to go into the Hat of Fate for the chance to win one of these copies, just leave a comment on this post!  I'll be drawing the winners on Saturday 22nd December at 10AM AEST, which I believe is Friday 21st December 7pm in New York.  This one is only for those over 18 though, I'm afraid, so no no entering if you're under that age.

Good lucky, guys!  Happy Kinkmas ... I mean Christmas!

I'm jealous of extreme couponers...

I'm feeling a little jealous of you Americans today.

The reason for my sudden attack of the green-eyed monster, you ask?  There's a new reality TV show that I've been watching lately.  I know, I know, I told you all that I'm not a fan of reality TV, and that's definitely the truth!  I hate shows like Big Brother, Survivor, and other monstrosities that only seem to exist to see how far you have to push a person before they become the worst version of themselves.

But I'm a bit more open to those shows like How Clean Is Your House or Escape To The Country.  For some reason, that particular style appeals to my inner voyeur without setting off all those second hand embarrassment alarms.  Give me a glass of wine, a Thai chicken curry, and half an hour of two middle aged British women teaching people how to get lime scale off sink fittings, and I'm as happy as a clam!

I thought I knew about most of those shows, but the other day I found one I'd never seen before.  I was strolling around in YouTube, as I'm known to do, and I stumbled across an American show called Extreme Couponing.  How on earth did I let this gem slip me by?

For those of you who've never seen it before, each episode follows two different "extreme couponers" as they try to buy ridiculously large quantities of groceries without having to spend any money.  It's full of people planning their grocery shop with a military precision that would make an Admiral faint.  Coupons collected, collated and filed into categories an cross referenced by location in the store and expiration date.  Stockpiles of tinned, dried and cleaning goods that would put a 1950's nuclear fallout shelter to shame.

It's absolutely breathtaking!

Take the episode I watched the other night.  In that one, a woman took over $1,800 worth of groceries, and at the end of it the supermarket actually gave her $150!!!  What sort of supermarkets do you guys have over there?  There isn't a shop in this country that would give you money to take stuff out of it!  I want shops that do that!

Unfortunately Australia doesn't do the whole coupons thing, so I'm left watching those shows, growing more and more envious.  Where are my 50 bottles of tomato sauce for five cents each?  Where are my 120 bags of rice that the shop gave me twenty cents a piece to take home because they were discounted to fifty cents and I had a coupon for seventy cents off?  I want to be able to stand at the cash register and watch my grocery bill total go down until it's in the single digits!

Alas, unless I choose to move to another country I'm not likely to be able to do that.

But a girl can still dream.

I question your archaeology, but I like your style...

I don't know much about North Korea ... or Korea in general.  Despite watching M.A.S.H reruns for years (and who hasn't, it's hilarious), the only facts I can recall off the top of my head are that there's a North and South, and that the capital of South Korea is Seoul.

At least I'm pretty sure it is.  That's where Hawkeye and Trapper John kept traipsing off to with their golf clubs over one shoulder, right?

So when I read the other day that said North Korea had announced that their archaeologists had discovered an ancient unicorn lair, I was a little thrown.  I mean, how do you respond to something like that?  After some deliberation, I decided like this.

North Korea, that is AWESOME!!!

I know that there are some nay-sayers out there who will decry their announcement as blatant pandering to Kim Jong-un, that it's just propaganda, but I decided to suspend disbelief and just go with it.  Cause come on, who out there can seriously say they wouldn't be stoked to find out that unicorns really did exist!  And as far as fabrications go, this one is pretty harmless.  They want to say they found a unicorn lair, let 'em!

Then, about a week after that announcement was made, the Korean government made a second statement.  Apparently there had been a translation snafu and it wasn't a unicorn lair they found.

Oh ... well that's disappointing.

There I was getting all excited about the idea of a world with unicorns in it, only to have my dreams crushed with a linguistic fuck up.

But then the North Korean archaeologists saved the day, amazing little buggers that they are.  They claim that what they actually found was the "nest of a beast with a dragon's head, a deer's body, the tail of a cow, hooves and a mane".

A dragon!  A fucking dragon!!!  That might even be cooler than the unicorn!

But a little part of me is still lamenting the loss of the elusive North Korean unicorn.  Perhaps I should make some unicorn poop cookies to console myself in my grief.

Chemically coloured sugar cookies always make thing seem better.

I don't know art, but I know what I like...

Have you ever wondered just where artists get their ideas for their pictures from?

I'm not an artist, I can't even draw a straight line without the help of a ruler, so I've never really thought about it before.

Do they just come up with stuff off the top of their head?  Do they copy from pictures?  How much artistic licence to they use?

But when I stumbled across these pictures, it made me realise the difference between someone making a copy of something, and someone taking something and making it their own.

I just love the details, looking at the pictures and seeing what the artist decided to keep, what they chose to alter, and what they made completely different.

I guess that's what they mean by art.

Needless to say, these pictures have made me realise a few things.  

• I'll never be an artist.  I have no idea how they can take a bunch of lines and make it look like a person.
• I absolutely love the art of this era!  
• Women in the 50's must have been awfully chilly.  They never seem to be wearing enough clothes!

Say, you look an awful lot like...

I've never really understood the allure of the celebrity lookalike.

I mean seriously, paying someone because they just coincidentally bear a striking resemblance ... some more so than others ... to someone who's famous?  Nup, don't get it at all.

Take the British woman who has earned over three hundred thousand pounds pretending to be Britney Spears!  Seriously, that's like four hundred and fifty thousand dollars!  All for pretending to be, lets be honest, a semi washed up crazy woman.

And to be completely honest, there's really not that much of a resemblance if the photos in the article are to be believed.  Sweetie, just because you're blonde and you cut your hair like her, that doesn't mean you're her celebrity lookalike.  How on earth did you con anyone into paying you to attend their events!  Hell, I wouldn't pay the REAL Britney Spears twenty bucks to attend something I was hosting, let alone shell out thousands to someone who only looks a little bit like her ... at the right angle ... in the right light.

Of course, I seem to be in the minority.  If the sheer number of them is anything to go by, being a celebrity lookalike is a good job.  People pay you to pretend to be someone famous, and even then they're probably not expecting you to be any good at it.  After all, it's all about the novelty factor of your genetics.

Truthfully, there's only one celebrity lookalike I will admit to liking.  Did any of you hear about the Gordon Ramsay dwarf porn star?  No, seriously, there was a guy who suffered from dwarfism who was the spitting image of Gordon Ramsay, that really bad tempered TV chef.  And in what I can only call a breathtaking act of stereotyping, he decided to use that fact as his hook to get into the porn industry.

Unfortunately before his no doubt uber-successful porn career could really take off, he died under mysterious circumstances and his body was found in a badger den somewhere in Wales.

Yeah, I know it's bad form to laugh.  After all, a guy died.  But come on ... dwarf porn star ... badger den ... Gordon Ramsay ... I'm only human!

Oh Canada, I kind of love you right now...

Is there anything that Canada doesn't do better than everyone else in the freaking world?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say no, no there isn't.

Case in point.  Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia has implemented a new "de-stressing" program for their students.  What is it, you ask?  Meditation hours in the quad?  Rainforest music played through the loud speakers?  Free massages to all undergrads?

While all of these ideas would be great ones (especially the free massages), that's not the path they've chosen to go down.  No, they weren't satisfied to be merely remembered as great when they could be immortalised forever as the most awesome university in the history of awesome universities!  But what is this oh so wonderful idea, you ask?

A room full of puppies!

No, seriously, a room full of puppies!  How great is that!  Dalhousie Uni, you rock!

Apparently the uni decided that the best way to make sure their students don't get so stressed out of their gourds that they go postal on the general population is to provide a room for them to go and interact with therapy dogs.  Sounds like a good plan to me!  I know I find it impossible to maintain the appropriate levels of homicidal mania needed for a good massacre when I'm cuddling a puppy.

But seriously, those of us with pets already know just how relaxing it can be to interact with something cute and fluffy, and I can only imagine that relaxation increases when you're not responsible for feeding them, grooming them, or handling their poop.  When you think about it, it makes you wonder how no one else has cottoned onto this idea before!

I want my work to offer this!  On a bad day when the numbers won't add up right, and the clients are being crabby, and I've had to listen to that one guy tell me all about his rash again, I want to know I can go out the back and there is an oasis of canine love waiting for me.

Ah, one can dream, I suppose.

So, Dalhousie Uni, in honour of you're rocking so hard that Stone Henge is saying "What the fuck..." I'd like to award you Kellie's Official Seal Of Awesomeness!

You earned it!

Oh Barbie, what have you done...

*Barbie's friend Midge enters the bathroom*

Midge:  Oh my god ... Barbie ... what have you done!

Barbie:  What ... oh shit ... I can't believe I did that...

Midge:  That's just ... I think I'm going to throw up...

Barbie:  Oh god, oh god ... you have to promise, Midge!  Promise you won't tell anyone!

Midge:  I don't know...

Barbie:  Please, Midge!  You're my best friend!  You have to keep this secret for me!  If you don't, I'll tell everyone about that time last Summer when you and that Carnie disappeared behind the Tilt-A-Whirl and ...

Midge:  ... OKAY!  Okay, I won't tell anyone.  But you owe me!

Barbie:  Thanks Midge, you're a star!  

Midge:  But seriously, why did you do it?  

Barbie:  I don't know ... I wasn't paying attention I suppose and it just happened.

Midge:  But it's so ... disgusting!  I mean really, wine on the toilet seat rim?  Haven't you ever heard of E Coli before?


Sorry guys, I saw this picture and I just couldn't resist.  The first thing I thought wasn't "Holy crap, Barbie decapitated Ken and bathed in his blood!", it was "Holy crap, putting that wine glass there can't be hygenic!".

The picture is one of a series by the artist Mariel Clayton, and if you like the weird, freaky and morbid that you should definitely head over and check out her stuff.  Some of them are a bit risque though, considering they're of Barbie dolls, so use your own discretion.

Putting the "fun" back into funeral...

200 dead bodies ... the creepiest
Where's Wally ever!

Those of you who are even a little bit familiar with my strangeness will know that I can sometimes lean a little bit towards the macabre.  As much as I hate to admit it, I've spent my fair share of time imagining up the perfect funeral and final resting place for myself.

I've always imagined a nice, quiet plot somewhere on a hilltop with lots of trees and a nice view.  Something classic.  Perhaps a nice limestone grave marker with a few nice words about what a wonderful human being I was and how everyone was just beside themselves when I unfortunately passed away rescuing that basket of puppies from a runaway combine harvester.

But one scenario that I didn't consider ... that didn't even cross my morbid little mind ... was that I could end up at a popsicle on a mountainside being used as a glorified "THIS WAY" sign.  But apparently if you decide to climb Mt Everest, that's a real risk you face.

According to this article on the Smithsonian website, climbers who perish on the mountain in their attempt to get to the top are just left there.  Currently there are over 200 bodies just lying up there.  I suppose I can understand that.  It's hard enough for people to get up there at all, it'd be impossible to go up and fetch down all the unlucky ones.  But I have to admit I was more than a little bit perturbed to find out that some of those bodies are actually being used by other hikers as landmarks to show that they're still on the right path.

Personally though, I'm not sure how I'd feel if not only was someone I knew and loved lying dead on a mountain, but he also had random people just wandering past his frozen corpse on a daily basis.  Then again, I'm not a mountain climber.  For all I know, it might be the highest honour one can achieve in the field.  To stand for all eternity, guiding the way for like minded brethren.

It made me wonder if perhaps there was a better use for my body after my regrettable lorry-truck-kindergarten-class-rescue demise.  After much deliberation ... and by much deliberation, I mean three glasses of wine and a ten minute googlefest ... I've decided any of the following will be acceptable.

Eternal Reef:  Imagine being able to spend eternity as a part of a coral reef.  This company takes your cremated remains, mixes them with concrete then deposits it in the ocean so coral will grow over it.  Imagine all the pretty fishies that'll come to swim around your dead body!  People pay a fortune to go diving to look at shit like that, so what better way of spending your afterlife? 

Burial in Space:  Like all good Trekkies, I had to include this one in my options!  Space, the final frontier!  To boldly go where only a few other stupidly rich dead people have gone before ... into the vacuum of space! 

LifeGem:  I've always like to think I was a gem ... and now in my afterlife I can literally be one!  These guys take your cremated remains and turn them into simulated precious stone.  Think about it, you could spend eternity as a ring, a pendant ... personally, I'm plumping for a tiara.  I am rather partial to a grouse tiara!

Yep, I'm putting the "fun" back into funeral!