It's hard spending the holidays in the slammer...

If I committed a crime, not that I have any plans to or anything, but if I did I always thought I knew what to expect.  A fine maybe.  Perhaps a slap on the wrist or a good behavior bond if it was a bit more serious.  Or, worst case scenario and if I was particularly naughty, jail time.

What I never would have imagined as a possibility was that the judge might cancel Christmas on me.

But that's what an Ohio judge has done to one woman, who was convicted of providing false ID's to illegal immigrants.  He sentenced her to five years parole, with the proviso that she spends at least three days over the Christmas period in jail each year [link].

Wow, that's pretty harsh, Mr Judge-Who-Stole-Christmas!

Can you imagine how demoralizing that must be, to have to ship yourself off to the big house every holidays?  No Christmas turkey with all the fixings for you, oh no!  You get to celebrate the festivities with a few slices of processed chicken breast, powdered mashed potatoes and tinned peas.  Yummy.

I must admit though, it's a genius punishment.  She gets off with five years probation rather than a serious jail term, but in return she has to go to spend the next five Christmases in the pokey.  I'd have to imagine that being forced to spend the holidays in jail every year would be incredibly effective deterrent.  How would you explain that to you kids?

"Sorry sweetie, Mummy won't be here for Christmas because she has to spot Big Bertha on the bench press in the exercise yard.  But she'll be home in time for New Years!"

Gosh, Miss Merryweather, shall we go for a bicycle ride in the countryside *nudgenudgewinkwink*...

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Finally!  It's taken over a hundred years, but our god given right as women to have orgasms while cycling has been returned to us.  Huzzah!

Many of you might not know this but back in the early days of bicycling, when cycling tours were all the rage and Mr Chips type characters would pedal around the countryside having picnics with young ladies while wearing three piece suits and bowler hats, bike seats were a little bit ... different.  A woman would have more reason to go out cycling than to get from point A to point B, and it generally involved the letter O.

But then the modesty police got involved.  Scandal!  How dare women be roaming around the countryside having orgasms willy nilly.  Only men were suppose to be able to find sexual gratification.  What next, women deciding that they didn't need men after all as long as they had the early 1900's equivalent of a 10 speed?  Wanting the vote?  Wanting equal pay for equal work?  Outrageous!

So the evil bicycle manufacturers created what they called a "hygienic" bike seat for ladies.  Apparently hygienic translates to "nowhere near as much fun", so ladies had to say goodbye to their fresh air, exercise and copious quantities of orgasms.

But now a UK sex toy company as decided it's time to right that century old wrong, bless their hearts, by creating a new product they call "The Happy Ride" [link].  For the bargain price of thirty seven bucks you can become the proud new owner of a vibrating bicycle seat which is equipped with multiple speed settings.  They do warn though that it gives off a "light humming" sound when in use.

Then again, what with the sound of traffic all around you I doubt anyone would notice.

I'm not sure what this will mean for road safety or bicycle related accident statistics, but right now I'm having a hard time caring.  It's a freaking vibrating bike seat, people!

What a wonderful time to be alive!

The next time I have to go on the lam, I'm all set...

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You know, I don't think there's anyting you can't learn from the internet these days.  Want to know how to knit?  Watch a Youtube knitting tutorial [link]!  Don't know how to change a washer in the sink?  Go to eHow [link]!  Need to bathe your cat?  Well, CollegeHumor [link] has the answer to that one!

But I have to admit that I never thought I'd find this particular how-to available on the good old interwebs [link].  "How To Disappear Completely" ... sounds intriguing, no?

I have to admit, when I first read it I thought perhaps it was a "how to" on magic tricks.  Then when I realised that they meant disappear in the geographical sense rather than the mystical one, I was just amused.  I mean, how much information could really be in it?  Would it just be the rantings of some angsty teen on how to run away from home, or a compilation of TV crime show observations?

As it turns out though, there's quite a lot of scarily good advice in there.  Common sense points that someone who was considering going off the grid might not have previously thought of.  Things like the fact that leaving in the morning rather than the afternoon gives you a better chance to get further away before anyone notices, and that slowly transferring your money from digital to cash over a period of time won't immediately draw the same suspicion as taking it all out at once.

I suppose if I ever needed to disappear for any reason there are worse things I could read.  It's hardly a step by step, but it definitely brings up issues I might not have thought about on my own.

But as interesting and informative as it may be, I think I'll have to pass.  Remove yourself slowly from the internet by slowing your use of online accounts before eventually removing them?  Yeah, like that's going to happen!

If scientists want to make my life easier by creating a diet pill, then I say god's speed, Mr Scientist...

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Some people say it's cheating, that it will just lead to more problems than it will solve, but I'm more optimistic.  If science wants to give us a pill that means we don't have to do exercise or watch what we eat anymore, then who am I to question science!

You can read about it here in my latest Sprocketink.com article [link]

Jesus lady, why can't you pretend your son doesn't have a sex life like a normal person...

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I'm sure we've all had experience with those parents who are just a little TOO involved in their kid's lives.  You know the ones, they not only know all the intimate details of their child's life, but have no qualms about telling said child exactly what they should or shouldn't do despite the fact that they're pretty much an adult.  And woe betide the poor kid if he doesn't instantly obey.  He's looking down the barrel of the mother of all guilt trips.

But this woman, bless her, has taken the creepy overbearing mother schtick to a whole other place [link].

Worried that she was sending her son off to Harvard without any sexual experience, this candidate for Mother Of The Year decided that the best option was to place an ad on Craigslist looking for someone to devirginise her darling boy.  Huh ... I don't know if that actually qualifies her for best or worst parent ever.

But don't worry, it's not like Mum was just going to bring a girl home and then shove them both in a room together with a bottle of Asti Spumanti and a Marvin Gaye CD.  Oh no, she had a plan!  She bought four tickets to a concert and planned to give two to her son, the other two going to the lucky lady.  Then said lucky lady would be expected to woo, win, and do the dirty with the unknowing lad.

I'm not entirely sure how Mommy Dearest expected to find out if the girl had gone through with it.  Most teenage boys don't celebrate losing their V card by rushing home to tell their mother all about it.  Maybe she was going to go to use the honor system.  Given how creepy the rest of this story is, I'm not sure I want to know if she had other plans.

But what was in it for the girl other than fumbling sex with an inexperienced and possibly socially awkward boy, you ask?  Well the final line of the ad hinted at what the girl's reward would be.

"Please put your favorite type of car in the subject, to show you're real."

It might be creepy and it might be weird, but with an incentive like that I bet the offers are still coming in.

Whatever you do, don't mention the war....

I don't think it will come as an enormous shock to any of you that if a news article is a bit out there, a bit irreverent or a bit ridiculous, I'm all over it.  I do love me some weird and wonderful news.  But even I did a bit of a double take when I saw this one.

Did you guys know that Saturday was Swastika Rehabilitation Day [link]?

True bananas.  Apparently those kooky alien loving little weirdos over at the Raelian International Movement got together and decided that enough was enough, the Swastika had done it's time and that now they wanted to reclaim it from it's association with the Nazis.

Uh ... good luck with that, Raelians.

I mean, logically I know what they're saying is true.  The Swastika was around a hell of a long time before it was adopted by Hitler and his cohorts.  It was a mystical and religious symbol for plenty of non-evil groups for thousands of years.

The Edmonton Swastikas

Hell, it was even the symbol for a women's hockey team back in 1915, who I'm sure had no idea that they were wearing a symbol slap bang on their chests that would become so universally reviled it would be taboo to use it almost seventy years later.

And that's the point, I think.  It's a taboo.  We all know taboos are social constructs, and often illogical, but that doesn't make them any less powerful.  As a society, when we see the Swastika we have a visceral reaction, and yes we were taught to feel that way but it doesn't change the fact.

So while I don't necessarily have the same angry reaction to this as other's I've seen, I'm still going to have to decline the Raelian invitation to embrace the Swastika.  More power to you if you've put it's history behind you and can accept it again ... I'm just not quite there yet.

An Open Letter: I swear I don't normally keep feminine hygiene products under there...

Dear Mr Delivery Guy,

I know our encounter today was awkward for us both, but I just wanted to assure you that things like this don't normally happen.  I swear, I had no idea that was under my old washing machine.

But it's just something that happens when you have a cat.  You'll grab anything to use as a cat toy.  Old balls of wool, socks, screwed up balls of tinfoil, and yes, the odd tampon.  Please don't judge me too harshly!  Tampons are exactly the right size and weight for cats to bat around, an when you've got one nipping at your ankles while you're putting your makeup on you'll throw anything at them you can get your hands on in the hopes they'll go after it instead of you.

And okay, so maybe Gypsy the Feline Dictator did bat one or two ... or six of them under the old machine.  And maybe I did spill some water when I was unhooking it.  And maybe they did expand and get stuck under there so that rather than roll out, they came away with the machine only to be revealed when you picked it up to take it away.

But really, it wasn't what it looked like!

Okay, fuck it!  I know you probably ran off the minute you left my place and told everybody the story about the strange woman who had tampons under her washing machine.  I guess I can live with that.

But can I just request that if we should ever see each other again, we'll both pretend it never happened?

Good, I'm glad we agree.

Yours sincerely

Kellie.

Commit a felony in the 'burbs and they exact their own special brand of vigilante justice...

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When I hear the term vigilante justice it conjures up images of angry mobs and hastily knocked together gallows.  But apparently vigilantism in the suburbs is a lot more civilized these days!

You can read all about it in my weekly article at Sprocketink.com [link]!

See what you've done hackers, this is what you've brought us to...

Internet account security is something that we've all got to deal with these days, I suppose.  What with hackers and scammers and that bloody Prince in Nigeria, you've got to have more protection on your online accounts than they do at Sexpo.

So I've done it all.  I've passworded and pin numbered and secret questioned and facial recognitioned.  I've allowed a cafe to record my thumb print so they could record my orders for their discount scheme (at least I hope to god that's why they took my thumbprint).  I've created passwords that had to have an uppercase letter, four numbers, a Greek symbol and a limerick in them before the system would accept them.  Honestly, I thought I'd seen it all.

But I have to say, I think Google might be going a little overboard with their security requirements.

You see, I've got my account set up where, when I log into Blogger, I have to enter a pin that gets texted to me.  I know, it's a bit overkill, but hackers just scare the bejezus out of me so it seemed like a good idea.  But when I logged in this morning Google asked me for a back up phone number.

Really, Google?  A backup mobile number?  Exactly how many mobiles do you think I own?

You know it's starting to get beyond a joke when an online account is asking you to buy more electronics to "keep your account safe".  If I didn't know any better, I might start to suspect that our Google overlords had shares in AT&T!

So I'm drawing a line in the sand, people!  Thus far, no further!  If a password and a unique expiring pin aren't enough to keep my account safe, then nothing will, no matter how many mobile phones I own.

So, what's the weirdest account security setup you've had to deal with?

I'm pretty sure that dentistry isn't an inherited trait...

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Drunk people aren't really known for their sound judgement.  I think we can all agree on that.

God knows, I have no room to judge.  I've done plenty of things I'm not overly proud of when I was "three sheets to the wind", but I think I can pretty safely say I've never done something so stupid as this guy [link] who thought it would be a brilliant idea to pull out some kid's loose tooth.

And not even a kid he knew, just some random child he saw in a park who was worrying the tooth with his tongue!  He just marched over and yanked that tooth out of that kid's head without so much as a by-your-leave.

I know drunk people have poor impulse control, but who on earth even has the impulse to pull out kid's teeth in the first place?  Is he a reincarnated Spanish Inquisition torturer?  A frustrated tooth fairy wannabe?

Although if I had to guess I'd say his blood alcohol level of 0.2% was the deciding factor.

But the best part of this story was his excuse when the cops arrested him.  Apparently he thought that he was perfectly entitled to practice amateur dentistry on non-consenting children because he came from a long line of dentists so he, and I quote, "knew what (he) was doing".  Yep that's right, he decided that just because his father an grandfather were dentists, that entitled him to practice without a license ... in a public park ... on a kid he just picked out randomly.

Oh dude, somehow I don't think the judge is going to buy that old chestnut.

What will those Muggles come up with next...

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I think the time has come for me to accept the truth.  I've been in denial for a very long time, but I can't avoid it any longer.

I'm not going to get an invitation to attend Hogwarts.

This is a hard one for me to accept and I'm trying really hard to be brave, but I need to just admit it out loud to you all.  I'm never going to get to sit in the Great Hall under the floating candles.  I'm never going to have a butterbeer in Hogsmeade.  I'm never, and this one really hurts, going to get to walk down Diagon Alley.

I know what you're all thinking.  "Kellie, you're a grown woman of thirty mumble, surely you realise that Harry Potter is just a book. Those places don't really exist.  Besides, the idea of a grown woman wanting to go to a school full of kids is just creepy.  Cut it out."

And to you doubting Thomas's I say, oh really?  Then how do you explain this [link]!

That's right, our overlords at Google have done what scholars for the past decade have been trying to accomplish ... and by scholars of course I mean Harry Potter nerds ... and proven the existence of the magical world.  You can put up all the protective spells you want, magical people, but you can't keep the Google Van out!

Thanks to Google maps, we Muggles can now get a glimpse inside of Diagon Alley and see the places we've all read about.  You can see Slug and Jiggers Apothecary, Eeylops Owl Emporium, Magical Menagerie, and plenty more.

I know, it's not the same as actually getting to go ourselves, but at this point I'm willing to take what I can get.

And so, to all my fellow Harry Potter fans out there, I leave you with a question I read on Tumblr the other day.  If you had the choice between world peace and getting to go to Hogwarts, which house would you be in?

Regardless of the outcome, you have to admit two dollars for an iPhone was a damned good deal...

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You know that old saying about how gosh darned easy it is to steal candy from a baby?  Well, turns out it doesn't translate to high end electronics, as a homeless man in New York learned the hard way.

Want to read more about it?  You can find my article on the topic over at Sprocketink [link].

How to become a volunteer without even having to get out of your pajamas...

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I don't volunteer.  I don't go to serve food in homeless shelters, or pick up rubbish on "Clean Up Australia Day", or go and sit with little old ladies on my weekends and listen to them tell stories about the good old days.  What with work and study and blogging and a pretty hefty Stargate Atlantis fanfiction reading schedule, I just don't have the time.

What's more, I have absolutely no desire to do any of these things.  When I do have spare time, the last thing I want to be doing is lugging my tired self out to somewhere I don't want to be in order to do something I don't want to do and not get paid for it.

I'm pretty sure that makes me an awful person, but there it is.

But I think my excuse of "I don't have the time and it's too far to travel anyway" isn't going to cut it any longer  Now days, what with computers and the internet, you can volunteer your time online to different places.  So if you're shy, or live too far away from any place that takes volunteers, or you're suffering from a gypsy curse that means you'll turn into a pumpkin if you set a foot outside your front door, you don't have an excuse anymore either.

And in that spirit, today I'm letting all of you know about a wonderful online volunteer program that the library I work for has started [link].

coughshamelessplugcough 

There's heaps of things that we need people to do, such as tagging photos and transcribing digital resources, that can be done from the comfort of your own couch.  You get the smug self satisfaction that only comes with unselfishly giving your free time to do good deeds, and you don't even have to get dressed!

But in all seriousness, it's a great opportunity for those who want to volunteer but don't want to have to travel to do it.  You can do it from your home while wearing your underwear and eating ice cream straight from the carton.

And really, isn't that the important thing?

Jeez Barbie, how do you stand on those things...

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Okay, I know this might come as a bit of a shock to some of you, so I'm going to try and break it to you gently ... it turns out that Ms Barbara Millicent Roberts, otherwise known as Barbie, doesn't exactly portray a realistic body type.

I know what you're all thinking.  "Kellie, say it isn't so!  Please reassure us that our beliefs of what a typical female body should look like aren't in fact based on a doll which, if she existed in real life, wouldn't even be able to support her own head!"

Sorry kids, no can do.  It turns out we're not actually supposed to have a waist the size of a bedpost, or heels that don't touch the ground, or weird non-specific genitalia and no nipples.

And were exactly are your nipples, Barbie?  It's freaking me out wondering what happened to them!

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But what would a realistic Barbie look like?  One artist decided to try to answer that question by building a "real" Barbie doll [link].  The result was a shorter doll with a much thicker waist, broader shoulders, larger thighs, and in my opinion a nicer face.

But the thing that surprised me the most?  The size of the feet.

Honestly, her feet were enormous!  Or maybe it'd be more accurate to say I'd never noticed how freakishly small Barbie's feet are.  We're talking easily half the size here.  Just think about that!  Look down at your feet and consider what it'd be like if they were only half that size.  Half as wide, half as long.  Can you imagine having to stand on feet like that?  Walk on them?

Oh Barbie, you creepy plastic blonde freak.  How is it possible for you to even stand up?

A whole new spin on the term loveseat...

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I do love a tale of star-crossed lovers fighting against the forces that keep them apart.  Romeo and Juliet, Mark Antony and Cleopatra, Buffy and Angel, who doesn't enjoy a good angsty romance?

So I think that's why I find myself sympathizing with Gerard Streator, the Wisconsin man who takes "cushion pushin" in a whole other direction.

Mr Streator was sentenced to five months jail the other day for having "intimate relations" with a couch someone had left on the footpath [link].  Honestly, just because his paramour was not a traditional partner, was that any reason to put a harsh on his mojo?  I mean, it's just rude to interrupt a man mid couch-coitus.

Okay, so maybe there problem wasn't so much that he was getting funky with a couch, but that he was doing it in public.  I'm pretty sure that if Mr Streator had wanted to have romantic candle lit interludes with his sofa in the privacy of his own home, no one would have questioned it ... or at least no one would have arrested him for it.

But instead he chose to do it in public on the street, so I suppose the police can be forgiven for taking offence.

In addition to the jail sentence, Mr Streator has been fined $243 to cover court costs and, something which seems odd to me, banned from owning pornography.  Seriously?  Completely banned?  That seems overly harsh.  I mean, this really was a victimless crime ... at least, as long as you don't count the people who had to watch his bare ass bouncing up and down.  I'll admit that they may have suffered a bit.

But banning him from owning pornograhy seems overkill to me.  And really, does an IKEA brochure count as porn anyway?

My plans to immigrate to the US have been set in motion, now I just have to buy the dim sims...

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If I'd known how easy it was to bribe my way into the United States, I'd have done it years ago!  Who knew that all it would take was a suitcase full of oh so delicious Chinese entrees?

Want to hear about my cunning plan?  Click here [link] to read about it in my article over at Sprocketink!

If MySpace is coming back from the dead, does that make it a zombie site...

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A long time ago, back in the dark ages of the internet before streaming video was common and Facebook was just a glimmer in Mr Zuckerberg's eye, I had an account on a little page called MySpace.

Ah, those were the days, where you could do such innovative things like post a profile, put a pretty picture behind it, and if you were particularly clever set some music to play in the background.

Don't laugh, you young whippersnappers!  These were the pioneering days of social networking!  We had no idea back then what was possible!

For those of you who don't remember (or have blocked it out), MySpace was one of the first popular social networking sites out there.  Imagine Facebook, but without the apps.  There was no Farmville or Candy Crush back then, my children.  We had to play games the old fashioned way ... at games.com.

We all had a page, and we were all friends with Tom (the creator of the site who took the opportunity to make sure he had more friends than anyone else).  But its popularity took a nosedive as Facebook's grew.  It just couldn't compete with having the ability to virtually poke people, I'm afraid.

But I read the other day that MySpace is trying to make a comeback [link].  That's right, for all you people who are feeling nostalgic about the early 2000's you can now log back into your MySpace accounts and start using it again in its new and improved incarnation!

Oh god, I just realised what this means, another social networking site to keep up with.  What with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram, I think I'm going to have to give up sleeping just to fit another one in!

I now declare you third grader and woman eight times his age ... I mean, man and wife...

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I remember the first time I got married.  I think I was about five or six, and it was in the front yard of my house.

I had a lovely veil in the form of a pillow case, my bouquet was provided by the hydrangea bush under my bedroom window, and while I can't remember which of the neighborhood boys stood opposite me, I do remember that rather than kissing at the end of the ceremony we finished it up with a rousing game of tag.

Ah, it was a lovely day.

But as elegant as my ceremony was, a South African eight year old has definitely beat me.  You see, he didn't just get pretend married, he got real married.  And he didn't marry some eight year old little girl from next door, he married a sixty one year old friend of the family [link].

Well, when I say real married, it wasn't a legal wedding, just a ritual.  And if we're going for full disclosure I should probably mention that the woman already has a husband and five kids.  So I guess it was more like my childhood wedding that I first thought, just with more money, nicer clothes, and a buffet afterwards.

But why all the rigmarole, you ask?  Apparently they do things a bit differently in South Africa, and when your dead Grandad comes to you in a dream and tells you to get married it doesn't matter if you haven't even hit double digits yet.

Still, I had no idea that our dead relatives could boss us around from beyond the grave.  So just to be on the safe side, I'm going to say one thing.  Grandma?  I miss you very much, but if you come to me in a dream and tell me I have to marry some pensioner I've never even met, I'm afraid you're going to be very, very disappointed.