Is there such a thing as a placebo for alcoholics...

I'm not a regular customer of McCafe.  No matter how they tart it up, it's still just a McDonalds.  But I have to say I'm glad I agreed to go when some friends suggested it the other night.  If I'd said no, as was my first instinct, I might have missed the following edition of "Kellie Has Fun Eavesdropping On People".

So we were sitting there, trying to work out if our pastries had fruit or chocolate in them, when a group of about twenty people all came in together.  That's a lot to traipse into a Macca's all at once so we were understandably curious.  Can you really blame us for eavesdropping?

"Well that was fun, for an A.A. meeting."

An A.A. group!  That was a first.  I didn't even know that one met around there.

We kept listening, because that's how we roll.  It was all pretty boring, just your usual chit chat about families and work and what they were doing on the weekend.

At least it was until one of them, a girl who was noticeably younger than the rest but definitely part of the group, fronted up to the counter and placed her order.  She couldn't have been very far out of her teens and she was dressed as if she'd come from a night club, tottering on a pair of six inch heels.

"Um ... I'll have one of those ... what are they called?  You know the one's that look like a daiquiri?"

Oh bless.

Good on her for going to AA of course, especially given how young she was, but I just couldn't help choking over my iced chocolate as she said that.

Somehow, I think she might need to keep going for a little while longer.

I don't even want to know where they thought the cell phone was hidden...

Being a teacher must be a bloody hard job these days.  What with low pay, variable levels of support from administration, and bastard kids, I take my hat off to anyone who manages to do it and do it well.

But I do think that the teachers in Quebec who thought it was a good idea to strip search a bunch of sixteen year olds because they thought one of them might be cheating on a test [link] probably should have opted to go into retail.  Or waste management.  Or pretty much anything other than teaching.

Not that there's anything new about threatening to have kids strip searched.  I remember when I was in High School they used to threaten it if they thought a kid had drugs on them.  To be fair though they'd call the cops in, not do it themselves.  

I have to assume that this is a case of teachers pushed past their coping point.  They couldn't possibly have thought that it would be allowed.  Maybe it started out as a threat they had no intention of following through on, but just snowballed from there.

They must have known that wasn't going to go down well once parents found out!  You can't just drag kids into a room and tell them to get their kit off!  Hell, they'll be lucky if they escape without charges of sexual misconduct.  

God knows if my kid was treated like that, I'd be out for justice, and nothing less than their heads on a spike would satisfy me.

I'm pretty sure I saw this on an episode of The Twilight Zone once...

Like most geeks out there, I do love me some technology.  Take, for example, the new developments lately in 3D printing.  They're just getting so good at it!  Hell, you can even use a 3D printer to print the parts of another 3D printer.  They reproduce!  We are this close to Star Trek style replicator technology, people!  Next step, holodecks!

But they have been getting some bad press lately, ever since that one bloke managed to print himself up a fully functioning gun [link].  It is kind of scary, isn't it, the idea that if some whacko buys the right equipment, he can manufacture guns right in his own lounge room.  Sure, they're not very good guns, but still!

But as scary as home made guns might be, they're still not the scariest thing to come from the new 3D printing technology.  That honour has to go to the frankly terrifying looking 3D portrait dolls you can now have made by a company in Japan [link]

Have any of you seen these things?  They're 3D printing the heads of real people and then attaching them to jointed dolls  Now don't get me wrong, I love technology.  The more advanced the better.  But these evil looking little dolls scare the bejezus out of me.

Look at those little buggers and tell me you wouldn't be scared out of your bobby socks if you saw one that looked just like you!

Personally, I'm thinking it's not actually 3D printing at all, but some obscure form of voodoo witchcraft.  Somewhere in Japan there is an evil Wizard, gloating over his dolls while tiny muffled screams issue forth from their resin lips.

I'm genuinely scared for my soul right now, people!  Someone get me a circle of salt, stat!

This wouldn't have happened if he'd been a crossword fan...

Like most people I spent a certain portion of my childhood doing jigsaw puzzles.  Hours upon hours of painstaking searching, matching and fitting to create a picture that, with varying degrees of success, resembled what I saw on the front of the box.

So when I read about this fellow, who made a forty thousand piece puzzle out of pictures taken from the Queen's diamond jubilee, only to watch it crumble in front of his eyes as he pressed in a tile that had come a teeny bit loose [link], I winced with second hand dismay.

You poor, poor bastard.

Can you imagine spending quite literally weeks on something like that, only to watch it fall apart and not be able to do anything to stop it?  Luckily he was able to salvage portions of it, and he thinks it'll only take a few weeks to recreate the rest of it, but he must have been so upset.

His wife, according to one article I read, was less sympathetic about it all.  When a reporter asked her what she thought about her poor hubby's masterpiece crumbling before his horrified eyes, she just started laughing and couldn't stop.

What does she do when he has serious problems?  Kick him in the shins?

Seriously though, go watch the video below.  It's one of those train wreck situations.  You know it's coming, you know you're going to cringe, but you just can't look away.

Whatever happened to using a good old fashioned scarecrow...

Working in the administrative area of a library is an odd experience.  I work in finance, but there are also people in my team who do records management, administration, and facilities management.  That's a pretty broad spectrum.  It means that you can find yourself discussing things you'd never have imagined when you woke up that morning.

Take, for example, the conversation I had with one of our facilities people the other day.

Him:  You know the problems we've been having with the birds outside the cafe? 

Me:  I may have heard some whisperings about the evils of bird poop, yes. 

Him:  Well I'm supposed to be looking for a solution, but I've only managed to find one so far ... and I don't think it'd go down very well if I suggested it. 

Me:  Okay, now you've got me curious. 

Him:  Um ... have you ever heard of something called psychedelic birdseed?

So apparently this is a genuine thing you can do to discourage birds from crapping all over your place.  You hire a guy to come in and lay out drugged seed that confuses them enough to leave, and then they tell all their little birdy friends that the shit you're pushing is bad so you end up with bird crap free footpaths.

Seriously, there's a guy out there somewhere whose job it is to do this.

Who the hell comes up with this stuff?  Who woke up one morning and thought to themselves, "Halucinogenic birdseed!  What a great business idea!".  And do I even want to know how they managed to get away with testing it?

"No, officer, I'm not poisoning those pigeons.  I'm just drugging them. Why?  Um ... for science?"

When David Bowie asked if there's life on Mars, I don't think this is what he had in mind...

So ... did anyone else hear about how those jokesters at NASA spent eight hundred million dollars so they could draw a picture of a dick on Mars?

*drops to the floor laughing uproariously*

Oh god, this is just priceless!  Surely there are cheaper ways of seeing if a robot can draw vaguely obscene graffiti.  Perhaps shelling out fifty bucks for a remote control car and a trip to the beach?

And if all they wanted was to draw dicks on things, couldn't they have just done it on a bathroom wall like a normal person? All that would have cost them is the price of a Sharpie.

Okay, okay, I know it's unfair to insinuate they did it on purpose, but that's the most amazing SNAFU I've ever seen!  Can you imagine the technicians in charge of the Mars Rover Curiosity trying to explain that one away?

"I'm sorry, sir, I don't know what happened.  One minute we were just doing our job, then Phil made a fart joke, and the next thing you know..."

According to NASA it was just a coincidence, and not a group of technicians acting like sixth graders.  But I'm not buying it.  I'm thinking that NASA guys are just like any other bunch of blokes. Get them together in a room for long enough, and their average mental maturity drops to that of a twelve year old.

Sure it was an accident, NASA ... sure it was.

Because you can never pull too many practical jokes around people wielding pointy scissors...

As most of you know by now, I'm an enormous phantasmaphile.

I love all things spooky and ghostly.  I've been on a fair few ghost hunts in my time, my collection of vintage true life haunting books is nothing to be sneezed at, and you've already heard about my Paranormal State and Ghost Hunters marathons.

So when I saw this practical joke that someone played in a beauty salon, I just had to share.

Why is it nothing this cool ever happens when I'm getting my hair done?  The scariest thing that's happened to me recently at the hairdressers is this conversation I heard going on behind me while I was getting a trim.

Woman:  Oh, don't cry sweethearts!  Mummy's just getting her hair cut!  Yes she is!  She'll be finished real soon and then you'll get to have dinner with Daddy.  Won't that be fun!

Children:  *shrill screaming*  I WANT TO GO HOME!!!

Woman:  Yes you will!  Dinner with Daddy!  

Children:  *wailing and punching*  HOME HOME HOME!!!

Woman:  Yum yum yum!  So much fun!

Children:  *yelling and making a break for the door*

Terrifying, no?

Luckily I was facing away from her so I could indulge myself in a fit of the giggles, much to my hairdresser's consternation.  At one point she even ducked down under the bench with the pretence of plugging in a hair dryer, just so she could slap me on the leg and mutter at me to stop laughing or she was going to lose it.

I thought I'd been pretty subtle about about it, but the filthy look I got from that woman as I walked out of the salon made me realize that perhaps not.  That's when I remembered that even though I'd been facing away from her, I HAD been sitting in front of a mirror.  A mirror which would have quite clearly showed my face to the rest of the room.

Oops?

Damned hair salon mirrors, always causing trouble.

And if you act now, you'll get the third month of incarceration absolutely free...

Tired of spending hundreds of dollars a month on cigarettes?  Sick of being sent outside like a naughty puppy every time you want a smoke?  Don't want to smell like the bottom of an ashtray anymore?  Well, why not try all new SlapACop!

That's right, with our revolutionary new quit smoking method, SlapACop, you too can give up smoking in as little as seventy two hours!  All for the price of a bus ticket to your nearest police station, you can exchange a face slap to a uniformed officer for an all expenses paid trip to jail.

Enjoy the peace and serenity of your very own jail cell, the professionally prepared meals, and most importantly NO CIGARETTES!  That's right, after being forced to go cold turkey, you'll be foot loose and cigarette free in no time. 

Disclaimer:  Fees listed here do not include any bond that may be required by your local law enforcement agency.  So really, if you end up having to shell out five grand to get you out of the pokey, it might not be the best option after all.

Sure it might sound like I'm being facetious, but this is something that a California woman actually did.  Rather than buy some chewing gum, visiting a hypnotist or asking a friend to yell at her every time she tried to have a smoke, she decided the best option was to try and get arrested so she'd be put in jail and out of temptations reach.

And really, with a plan like that, how could it go wrong?

I'm guessing she didn't really think it through.  I'm not exactly an expert on the clink, but I've been led to believe that cigarettes are quite plentiful in there, what with them being used as a form of currency and all.  But then what do I know, maybe she did her research and found a smoking free jail before she headed off to put her plan into action.

You'd need to be pretty careful though, I'd imagine.  Go too easy on him and you'll get off with a warning, go too hard and you might end up with a pretty new anklet and the inability to put the rubbish out after seven o'clock at night.

On second thoughts, maybe it would just be easier all round to buy a packet of Nicorette.

Because life's too short to spend time running a hot piece of metal over your unmentionables...

I'm pretty sure I own an iron. You might not realise it from the state of my clothes, but it's around here somewhere. There's a cardboard box in the laundry I haven't searched in a while, maybe it's in there.

The ironing board though, well that's a tricky one.  The last time I saw it I was using it to prop up the steam mop (also M.I.A.).  That was about six months ago, so god only knows what's happened to it since then.

But really, it's not surprising I don't know where they are.  I don't iron. My tea towels get folded in whatever state they come off the line, my sheets go on the bed rough dried, and my clothes are purchased for both their comfort and their declarations of not requiring ironing.

I know, it's utter blasphemy for someone who loves cleaning porn as much as I do, but I just can't help it.  Ironing is one of those chores which, despite my best efforts, I can't seem to make fun.  And believe me, I've tried!  But there's only so many After Dinner Mints you can bribe yourself with before you're sick to your stomach with half a basket of ironing still left.

I guess you could say I have a love/hate relationship with ironing. When I was a wee little thing, that's how I earned most of my pocket money. A cent for hankies, two for tea towels and pillow cases, five for clothing and ten for sheets. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that qualifies as child slavery.

I should look up the statute of limitations on something like that.

I suppose I could just cut the crap, be a grown up, and iron the damned shirt, but I like to think that I'm taking a stand against misrepresentation in the clothing industry. They told me I wouldn't have to iron those shirts. I didn't iron those shirts. Sure, I may look like a really big shar pei, but a gal's got to put her foot down somewhere.

A six year old harlot or a victim of PC insanity, you decide...

I've seen a lot of scary things when I've been out shopping ... those mounted fish that sings "Take Me To The River" comes to mind ... but I always get an extra special case of the shivers when I see those god awful clothes they're trying to sell little girls these days.

Seriously, what sort of an eight year old needs a padded bra?  Or a lace teddy?  Or a g-string with "Naughty" on the front?

The sexualisation of kids has definitely gotten worse over the last few years.  Kids are encouraged to want to wear these things that no one would have dreamed of dressing a child in when I was little.  It's really no wonder we're all erring a little on the conservative side when it comes to children's clothing.

But I have to say, I think the school officials who called this six year old girl's parents to complain about her clothing being too "revealing" might have gone a tad overboard.

Apparently the school thought that her Hello Kitty outfit was too revealing, claiming that the length of the shorts were in breach of the school's dress code.  Her parents were, understandable I think, confused.  The girl was wearing leggings underneath them, and had actually worn the same outfit to school before without any complaint.

If their problem was with the length of the shorts, well I can say that I wore them just as short when I was her age, but I would never have said there was anything questionable about the clothes my mother dressed me in.  


Take, for example, this picture of me when I was about five (with my brother).  That skirt is just as short as the little girl's in the article.  Would you consider what I'm wearing to be inappropriate? Is there really that much of a difference between her outfit and mine?

There's a big difference between kids clothes that are short and kids clothes that are inappropriate.  There wasn't anything provocative or sexual about that little girl's outfit.  Nothing that screamed 6 going on 30.

So go take a look for yourselves.  Do you think her outfit is too risque for a six year old?  Do you think the school was overreacting?  Do you think Hello Kitty shorts will soon be joining Big Mouth Billy Bass as an inappropriate and tasteless thing to display in public?

But most importantly ... didn't I look awesome in that little blue dress?  Damn, I was a cute kid!

And the winner of the public embarrassment award is...

From the back row of the University Playhouse...

Bob:  Well, this is the first time I've ever seen THAT happen at a play. 

Me:  Uh ... is that guy... 

Bob:  Yeah, I think so. 

Me:  And he's got a ... 

Bob:  It certainly looks like it. 

*actor turns to the side, presenting a spectacular 'profile'* 

Me:  (turning head sideways)  It's pretty impressive really.  You'd think he'd be able to hide it in that paint overall he's wearing, but it just seems to make it bigger.  

Bob:  But hey, bright side!  At least he's not wearing a tights like the rest of them. 

*both wince as the actor leaps across the stage* 

Me:  That can't be comfortable. 

Bob:  Why is there so much bouncing?  Does he really need to be bouncing right now? 

*actor sits down in an attempt to hide his dilemma, but just makes it more noticeable* 

Me:  If I was him I'd probably have run of stage by now. 

Bob:  (waggles eyebrows) The show must go on, I suppose, no matter how hard things get. 

Me:  Oh, that's terrible!  You're not allowed to make any more puns.  Your punning license has been revoked. 

*actor finishes his scene and rushes off stage* 

Me:  Oh, he's gone.   

Bob:  (mutters) Hopefully to find a cold shower or something.   

Me:  Either that or a box of tissues. 

Bob:  Okay, I probably could have done without that visual.   

Me:  What!  He just did a whole Shakespearian scene with the largest boner I've ever seen.  If anyone deserves a happy ending, it's that bloke.

And this, my friends, is why I'm glad I'm not a guy.

Poor thing, how unlucky can you get!  It's bad enough when something like that happens in public, but to happen on a stage in front of an audience of hundreds of people?  Knowing full well that this is an assessment piece for your University acting degree?  That's got to suck.

Still, kudos to you Mr Actor for being the consummate professional and ignoring the enormous erection you were sporting for a good five minutes there on the stage.  You really rose to the occasion!  I know it was hard, but you hung in there.

Sorry, couldn't resist.  I'll be good now.

Okay everyone, lets put on our serious topic undies...

I know I can be a little opinionated ... okay, I know I can be VERY opinionated ... but I normally refrain from writing about things that are too controversial.  I lean towards mind bogglingly stupid news articles, conversations with my cat, or the homoerotic nature of early 20th century children's literature.

Not that I have anything against posts that are about serious topics, I quite enjoy toasting marshmallows over the flame wars that start in the comments.  But if I decide to air my opinion on a topic, it's usually because I see it as a matter of common sense.

But when I was asked to write a post for AbortionChat this week, I decided to go ahead and do it despite my self imposed limits.  I thought it was such an interesting idea, a blog not dedicated to one side of the debate or the other, but set up for the sole purpose of allowing all sides to discuss the topic in a non judgemental way. 

So head on over to here and have a read!  Maybe you'll agree, maybe you won't, but hopefully you'll appreciate my opinion.

That's one Dutch artist I won't be asking to cat-sit anytime soon...

It's always a bit of a dilemma, deciding what to do when your pet dies. Do you have the vet cremate them?  Bury them in the back garden?  Have them stuffed and mounted?

Luckily Gypsy the Feline Dictator is only about eight years old so I've got another ten years or so before I need to worry about what to do when she finally shuffles off  the feline coil ... but I think that I may have found a way to make her "send off" a special one.

Catcopter!

Yep, that's right, a Dutch artist has found what I think might be the creepiest way to immortalise your beloved furry companion ... and that's really saying something, I've read Pet Cemetery!

But credit where credit's due, it takes a really well developed sense of the macabre to look at your recently expired cat and think "Hmm, if I strap her to a kite frame and duct tape some propellers to the paws, Kitty would make an awesome remote controlled helicopter".

I don't want to know how he explained this one to his kids, do I. 

"Kids, Tiddles was hit by a truck today.  But don't worry, it's not like you'll never see her again.  She's having her maiden flight at eight o'clock on Saturday morning!"

Go ahead and check out the video below and then let me know your opinion.  Is it art, or is it a weird and frankly disturbing thing to do to a much cared for pet?

I'm going to go for door number 2.

Thigh high boots are never a good look...

I've never really understood the whole footwear fetish thing that so many women obsess about.  I'd be just as happy to go barefoot for the rest of my life, perhaps unbending enough for a nice pair of Ugg Boots in Winter.

But even I can admit a fondness for a nice pair of knee high boots.  Sure, a few years ago if you went out in public wearing a pair of them everyone assumed you were a streetwalker, but now they're commonplace.  Every girl and her granny owns a pair.

Thigh high (or maybe I should say crotch high) boots, however, aren't so readily accepted.

So I have to wonder what on earth possessed the woman I saw today to wear a pair of thigh high black leather boots to work?  Did she honestly wake up that morning, look in her shoe closet and say to herself  "Hmm, I think I'll wear these whopping great boots that go all the way up my legs so I might as well be wearing a pair of leather pants. Good idea!"

The scary thing was the rest of her outfit looked relatively normal. Sure, her skirt was maybe a tad shorter than most would choose, but I suppose it was all the better to show off her horrendous boots. If she'd been wearing any other footwear I probably wouldn't have even noticed her.

I suppose that's the problem. She wanted people to look at her. Obviously starved for attention. Maybe she's a middle child, grew up without parental approval or acknowledgement. She's obviously projecting her inner child and it's search for attention in her clothing.

 Or maybe she just likes dressing like that.  Meh, what do I know, I only did one semester of psych, and I managed to fail it.

I'm not normally critical of what people wear. As far as I'm concerned, you can go out wearing a sugar sack and I probably wont even notice. But I must say, I really don't think anyone should wear boots like that.

Well, unless they're a Dominatrix ... or possibly going trout fishing.

We've come a long way from sixpence to see the freak...

I love side shows.  I love the cheap, not at all good for me corn dogs, the endless tinned carnival music, and the ridiculously unsafe rides.  But the thing I love the best about side shows? 

The games!

I love throwing balls down a clown's throat (and yes, I know how that sounds, pervert) or shooting tin ducks with a BB gun in the misguided attempt to win a stuffed toy that I know I'm just going to throw away before the end of the day.  I don't know why I love it, but I do!  I guess it's just part of the experience.

Still, I'm guessing that if I'd done what this guy did, I wouldn't be raving about it quite so much.

This guy, poor sod, lost his entire life savings on one of those toss a ball in a bucket games.  Honestly, almost three thousand dollars trying to win an XBox Kinect, and all he ended up with was a hilariously large stuffed banana wearing a Rastafarian hat. 

I know, it's a glorious image, isn't it.

But I can understand how he got suckered in.  Anyone who's ever sat at a pokie machine, waiting for those "free spins" knows the magical lure of gambling.  And that's essentially what he was doing.  It was a crappy gamble, I'll give you that.  He'd have been better off walking into the nearest casino and putting it all on black.

But to then blame the side show for the fact that he essentially lost his mind and willingly handed over three thousand dollars ... no, I can't agree that it was their fault.  They provide crappy, hard to win games with prizes that are worth a pittance.  We all know this, it's the agreement we have going in.  To then turn around and blame them because he was out of control doesn't seem fair to me.

Still, poor bastard.  He spent three grand trying to win something that would have only cost him a couple hundred in the shops, and instead all he got was a dreadlocked banana.  That's going to be a hard one to explain to his wife, I'd imagine.