An open letter: a helmet and a pair of bike pants do NOT make you indestructible...

Dear bicyclist who was on the road this morning,

I'm trying very hard to remain calm here.  I don't want to lash out at you in anger, that's not going to get us anywhere, but you're really not making it easy for me.  I'm just having a hard time understanding why you insist on going out there on the road every day and wilfully putting your life (and my sanity) on the line!

I get it, I really do.  Being a cyclist is difficult.  You ride around on a small tin machine with only a fibre glass helmet and a terrifyingly tight pair of bike pants to protect you.  It must be awfully stressful, navigating roads filled with roaring metal contraptions that seem to want to run you down.

So I would have expected that you'd take more care with your personal safety, not less.  I know the traffic this morning was going slower than usual, but that doesn't give you leave to overtake me in a narrow lane, swerve in front of me, then look over your shoulder and start yelling at me!  I hate to break it to you sweetheart, but what you did was against the road rules, and if you insist on riding on the roads with the rest of us, then we're going to have to insist that you follow them!

Your action were irresponsible and dangerous, you could have gotten yourself hurt, and trying to blame me for them just because you were scared and feeling guilty isn't going to help anyone!  If you want to ride your bike on the road I won't object, but I refuse to support you if you're just going to use it as an excuse to pirouette around me, trying to get yourself turned into a little greasy spot on the bitumen!

I'm sorry, I don't mean to shout.  I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.  I don't want to see you hurt, and god knows I don't want to be the one that hurts you.

So here's the deal ... I'll accept half of the responsibility for  your safety, if you'll accept the other half.  Come on, it's a fair deal.  Up until now I've been doing all the heavy lifting in this relationship, making sure I know where you are at all times while you duck and weave through traffic like a five year old on pixie sticks.  All I'm asking for is a little care for your own well being on your part ... and perhaps brushing up on the road rules wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Love Kellie.

P.S. Don't take my jibe about the tight bike pants to heart, you've got a rather nice rear so they're really quite fetching.

They just don't understand our love, Simba...

Really?  This is what you choose
to get arrested over? 

It's a tale of forbidden love.  Two souls, forever entwined, but cruelly kept apart by the harsh judgement of society.  Forced to meet clandestinely in the dark of night, only able to steal brief moments of comfort in each other's company and arms.

Well, when I say arms, I mean one set of arms and one set of immovable bronze paws.  The love of a man for his bronze lion statue is epic, epic I tell you!

Surely she's a much more
attractive option!

 So it seems that there is a young Austrian man somewhere in Russe, Bulgaria who was arrested the other day for having sex with a bronze statue of a lion in public.  Hmm, does that mean that if he'd done it in private they wouldn't have had a problem with it?  I suppose that's true, people have sex with inanimate objects all the time.

But it does make you wonder just why he thought THAT particular statue would be a good self pleasuring device.  There doesn't seem anything particularly sexy about it.  I mean, if he was going to get jiggy with a metal effigy, surely he could have found a nice bronze man or woman (whichever his preference) and then had his romantic liason.

Well, at least you know
what you're getting.

A quick Google search shows that there are plenty of other options in the town of Russe if you're determined to feel cool metal or stone under your wandering fingertips.  What about the girl above?  She's young, pretty and her hand is very strategically placed if you get what I mean!  *nudge nudge wink wink*

Or, if your tastes lean towards the male of the species, how about our friend to the left?  He's quite the strapping lad, although he seems to have forgotten his trousers.  Actually, now that I think about it, that hair cut kind of makes him look like He-Man.  I guess if you're into 80's cartoon heroes it could work...

But perhaps I'm pushing our Austrian friend too hard to find a human shaped inanimate partner.  Maybe he just wanted to do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Blogiversary Giveaway: and the winner is...

...  Stephen Hayes over at The Chubby Chatterbox!  Congratulations!  If you haven't read his blog before, I highly recommend going over there and having a browse.  He's charming and hilarious and well worth a visit!

If you send your postal address to delightfullyludicrous@gmail.com, I'll pop them in the mail for you ASAP.  I'm sure you're going to have oodles of fun reading about those kooky Edwardians and their hilarious gender stereotypes.

Thank you everyone who took the time to comment and congratulate me on reaching the six month mark.  I am, quite frankly, blown away by what a wonderful community we have going on here.  Yay us!!!

I had a couple of enquiries about where you can get copies of these books.  Personally, I got them from here, but that's only useful if you live where I do.  However you can also get them online at amazon.com.

So thank you once again for coming and playing with me every other day!  I love each and every one of you the most!

The sort of funeral I could DEFINITELY get behind...

I remember when I was studying archaeology at university, they told us that one of the signs of a civilised culture was care taken with the dead.  Apparently the more knick knacks you give someone who's popped their clogs, the more refined you are.

But I'm pretty sure that my Professor wasn't referring to the Taiwanese practice of having strippers at the grave side when he was extolling the virtues of those who pay extra attention to their funerary rites.

Yep, you heard me right, strippers.  Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up ... and why would I want to when it's all right there for the pickings!

Apparently it isn't unheard of for family members of the deceased to hire an "exotic dancer" to dance for him.  That's right, not for the mourners ... for the dead guy.  I suppose it's fair enough, he's had a bad time of it.  First he died, then some bloke took all his blood out and replaced it with chemicals, then they stuck him in a really uncomfortable suit that he probably tried really hard to avoid wearing when he was alive, and finally they shoved him into a little wooden box ... and you can't tell me they didn't bend his feet up if it turned out he was a touch too tall for it!

He probably needs a bit of a pick-me-up after a day like that.  That dude earned his post-mortem sexy dancing ladies.

But it did get me to thinking about what I'd like at my funeral, should time, finances and availability allow.  Really, its something we all should think about, no point leaving it to our relatives who would probably get it all wrong anyway.  So after much deliberation I've decided to leave a list of instructions to be followed in the event that I shuffle off this mortal coil.

• I'd like my funeral to be fancy dress.  Just general costumes if necessary, but if time allows, then it should be themed.  My preference is for one of the following:  
• Harry Potter
• Tarts and Vicars
• Roman Toga
• Come as your favourite dead person (I'll be very offended if you don't all come dressed as me)
• There will be no bible readings or other religious speeches at my funeral.  Instead, I'd like my entire life narrated via the medium of interpretive dance.
• There definitely needs to be a lucky door prize.  I'm thinking a toaster, or maybe a set of luxury towels.  At least that way someone walks out of there happier than when they walked in because hey ... free towels!
• In honour of the Taiwanese custom that gave me this idea, of course I also want strippers.  In fact, if you could convince Matt Bomer to attend and do some of those things he did in Magic Mike ... well, then I think we'll ALL leave happier than when we arrived.
• And, as shown in the picture above, I'd like my casket carried to my resting place by clowns.  No particular reason, it just looks really cool.  Come on, look at that picture and tell me that you wouldn't want that too!

So that's the bare bones of it, I'll leave it up to the rest of you to sort out the little details if and when they're needed.  But I'll just add one last instruction.  If it ends up being an open casket, could someone please monitor the viewers?  Not all of my associates are entirely scrupulous and I'd hate to go to my eternal rest with a drawn on moustache or no eyebrows. 

Ta muchly!

I've heard of the power of the mind, but this is ridiculous...

I like to think I'm a tad more well informed about different religions and beliefs than the average bear, but I have to admit that I don't really know that much about Voodoo.  Beyond what I saw in the Kate Hudson movie Skeleton Key, my knowledge pretty much begins and ends with the word "witchdoctor".  Somehow, I think none of that really gives me a suitable knowledge base to be making judgements.

But when has that ever stopped me.  

I definitely believe in the power of the mind.  Hell, my religion makes it practically compulsory to do so!  But even so, I like to think I temper that with a little thing I like to call common sense.  Do I believe that universal forces can be affected by intense thought and meditation?  Yes.  Do I think that one person, thinking really, really hard, can create a strong immediate and physical reaction in someone?  Ah, no.  No I don't.  If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it and we'd have all killed each other off years ago.

But I'm sure you're wondering where I'm going with this seemingly nonsensical rant.  I guess the question of the day is if you rape someone in your imagination, is it really rape?

According to this news article, a man was arrested in Zimbabwe for having non-consensual Voodoo mind sex with a woman at a bus stop.  Apparently someone got a wee bit suspicious when he started sweating, looking a little "excited", and staring at the woman like a big creepy creeper.  The conclusion drawn?  He was practising Mubobobo, a type of Voodoo that let him have sex with the woman using only the power of his mind.

Uh ... yeah, we have something like that too.  It's called fantasising.

Of course, I'm not trying to downplay the ick factor of this guy getting all hot and bothered in public thanks to some poor unsuspecting woman.  There's no doubt it's disturbing, and depending upon what he was actually doing and the laws in the area possibly illegal, but I really can't see the justification for calling it rape.

Jeez, if everyone who had imaginary mind sex with someone without their consent was arrested, there'd be no one left to run the place!  I know I would be, thanks to several very good looking TV and movie stars and, in recent memory, a rather dishy guy who was painting the side of a house wearing only a pair of overalls ... sorry, my blue collar kink is showing, isn't it.  But the point is everyone does it, and anyone who tells you that they don't is a god damned liar whose pants are definitely smouldering!

For those who haven't yet, just another reminder to go enter if you want to win the set of "Don'ts for..." books I'm giving away!  

So, it turns out I'm a hardened criminal...

Did you know that I was a criminal for six year?

It's true.

For six whole years I blatantly, if not knowingly, broke a law.  I mean, it's not like I bought myself a mask and a crowbar and decided that a life of crime was the way to go, I had no idea what I was doing was even illegal, but then they do say that ignorance is no excuse.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it here before but I'm a Pagan.  I have been since I was about ninteen or twenty years old when I first realised that pretty much everything I already believed fit into the beliefs of Paganism.  I remember reading about it in a book my brother had given to me and thinking "Oh, I'm a Pagan ... well now it all makes sense".

The only problem was that Paganism wasn't made legal in the state I live in until 2001.

So there's a good six or seven years that I was practicing an illegal religion, and I had no idea.  Hell, it never even occurred to me that there might even BE illegal religions!  No one ever said anyting to me about it, and it's not like the Pagan community was keeping themselves hidden away or anything, so I had absolutely no idea I was doing anything illegal ... until I read about those laws being repealed in a magazine.

It was a bit of a shock, I must say.

I have to imagine that Keith London, a city official in Florida, had a similar reaction when someone tried to have him charged with living in sin, another old law that no one had gotten around to removing.  I mean seriously, who even uses the expression "living in sin" in this day and age? Were they tutting about the scandal of it all while they were churning their butter and hand sewing a dress for the Sunday church social?

His response was, as you would expect from a city official, a very politely worded screw you and the horse you rode in on.

I can't imagine the complaint got very far, but I still think it's great that he was willing to stand up and say "no" in the face of an unjust law, no matter how outdated and unused.  I like to think that if someone  had turned up at my door and insisted I renounce my beliefs or face charges ... I would have told them to go jump too.   No one is going to tell me what I can and can't believe in!

Yep, I'm just a rebel I guess.

But don't tell anyone, okay?  I'm far too delicate to survive in jail.

By the way, don't forget to go and enter if you'd like to win the set of "Don'ts for..." books I'm giving away in celebration of Delightfully Ludicrous surviving to make it to it's six month anniversary.  Come on!  That's like 50 years old in blog years!!!

Blogiversary: where the presents go to you...

Happy six month blogiversary to me!

Happy six month blogiversary to me!

Happy six month blogiversary dear Delightfully Ludicrous!!!!

Happy six month blogiversary to meeeeee!!!!!!

Yep, that's right, Delightfully Ludicrous is now six months old!  

*pops party streamers*

And in celebration of this very important event, I've decided to have another giveaway!  Those of you who've been visiting me for a while will remember a couple of reviews I did a few months back on two vintage books very descriptively entitled "Don'ts for Wives" and "Don'ts for Husbands".  They gave some ... shall we say interesting ... advice to the matrimonially blessed, such as making sure not to hire good looking servants in case your husband decides to get a little handsy, and to not let the little lady spend too much on her own lest she waste a month's housekeeping on some silly frippery.

Well if you ever wondered what other absolute gems of advice were contained therein, today's your lucky day!

One lucky reader is going to get a copy of each of "Don'ts for Wives" and "Don'ts for Husbands", as well as "Don'ts for Mothers" and "Don'ts for Weddings"!  That's right, four whole books of outdated, misogynistic advice.

How could you resist!  

So if you'd like to be the lucky winner, just leave a note below and I'll randomly draw a winner from the hat of fate!  You have until 10am AEST on Thursday 8th November to enter, which I believe is 8pm Wednesday 7th November New York time.  

Thanks again for all your support over the past six months, guys.  It's made writing here a joy and a delight.  Here's to the next six months!