When a Red Ribbon is Just a Red Ribbon and Not a Metaphor for Psycho-sexual Mind Games

Hell-oooooooooo! Phew, I'm finally back after being whisked away by George Clooney for three months in Sodom and Gommorah.  (Don't even know if I spelled tha' proper-loike).
Or I could have had my head stuffed so far up a criminalistics textbook that when I emerged I found my children have left home, I've three grandchildren, my husband has run off with a one-legged rastafarian mandolin player and I live within a fortress of newspapers - and ninety seven cats.  Which is most likely? Nevermind.

There is much to be said for hitting a certain age and discovering that your neurons fire about as fast as Telstra's internet dial up network.   I can run faster than the connection at my Mum's place.  Anyway, what I'm trying to say in my typically verbose fashion is .... I've been studying to the exclusion of everything....(except Thing 1 and Thing 2).  The way I hit the books you would think I would've actually sewn up string theory, or at least next year's Nobel Prize. sigh.
Unlike some, I can't learn via osmosis.  As much as I'd love to place my faith-healer hands on a textbook and feel all that knowledge stream into the draughty cavern that is my craniobrainio bit.  My brother-in-law learns like that.  He's a super dooper mergers and acquisitions lawyer who studies for his masters by just THINKING about blowing the cobwebs from his textbook - while he surfs.  My sister is the same....the memory of a steel trap, although admittedly it is generally confined to irrelevancies such as the fact that I borrowed $15 from her in 1982 (she's working out the interest as I write) and my plethora of other crimes and misdemeanours dating back to her birth in 1974.

Dreamt of exams the other day.  Usually it's me walking into a gymnasium looking at the eleventy million desks lined up for an english exam and ...*lightbulb*.... "Oh. I forgot to read the book".  Actually that wasn't a dream, that was true. Almost.  For practically all of my year 12 exams.
Modern European History: Medici's, yeah, weren't they hairdressers from Milan?
Religious Studies: Exodus, I'm sure that's an English boy-band.
Legal Studies: the snail in the bottle....the snail....in. the. bottle.  Yep, that set a precedent that resulted in Schweppes always making  sure there were never. any. more. snails. in. bottles. 
English:  A red ribbon always means a loss of viginity (Tess of the Durbervilles) and seagulls flying into a sunset means new life (Fly Away Peter).  God help me! When can a story just be a damn good yarn and not sneakily woven with symbolic trickery?
I failed. 
The latest exam anxiety dream was loaded with obvious neuroses.....my subconscious knows it needs to s.p.e.l.l things out for me otherwise I will meander in blissful ignorance into the next disastrous quagmire.

Sometimes a red ribbon is just a red ribbon.

(Coming up:  The Kardashians (good grief) and Living the High Life).

It's My Funeral and I'll Laugh If I Want To.

Occasionally I've been known to muse on my own demise and subsequent funeral.

Eidelweiss thinks this makes me weird. (At least I don't make lampshades out of baby skins).

(Should I die expectedly unexpectely tonight from being stabbed by Humphrey  an aneurism I expect my loyal Blogsters will ensure my final wishes are granted or I. Shall. Haunt. You.  Humphrey already has an Exorcist on speed dial).

So, this is how I would like my funeral to proceed:

There will be:  A ferris wheel,  face-painting, a bouncy castle, a sushi bar, Italian baristas, George Clooney (my God, he's single again...I may just holiday on Lake Como this year....), naked wrestling in chocolate mudcake, a fountain of any New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and me in a coffin in the likeness of Barbie.
For music I think a Mexican with a big sombrero and a ukelele (?) and a stout Italian man with a handlebar moustache and a piano accordian. There must be much dancing in circles.
Guests will dress in floral kaftans (the women can wear togas). Marshmallows shall be toasted over a the funeral pyre bonfire. Much gayness and frolicsomeness will be had by all.

Of course, being a realist, I know that something will go wrong.  Hopefully it won't be my putrifying corpse busting the hinges off Barbie. No I think it will be something all the more....gossip-worthy.   Oh, I know!!!
The birds are singing, the sun is shining and Aunty Helen is bouncing on the rubber castle....all are enjoying the flabulicious funeral......until....

The eulogy.

During the eulogy - given by George Clooney who is heartbroken that he the world has lost his only love a truly fabulous chick -- Humphrey pales and looks aghast.  It is not the sobbing of George that shocks our hero  H, but the arrival of a Fed Ex van.
The driver of  said van struggles with a large cardboard box punctured with multiple holes.  
"Parcel for Mr Humphrey from Mr H Hefner?" puffs the van driver swaggering with his clipboard toward the bazillions of eye-dabbing mourners.
"You're a day EARLY," hisses Humphrey.

And that, dear friends, was how Humphrey's friends, and my own, were introduced Candy - his new bride.  I say "new" because"  this 20-year-old model had been discarded by Hugh.  Candy had been superceded by the 16-year-old Lola version that the octogenarian had just moved into his Mansion. Candy was found in the bargain bin of the online catalogue.

Ok. So I may have been pushing the boundaries with the whole bouncy castle thing. It is more than likely that my funeral - with no intervention from my Blog Buddies - will end up like this:

Humphrey, a man of simple tastes and understated elegance (emphasis on understated), would probably prefer me to be wrapped in a linen shroud and buried under a bluebush.  The bush would be adjacent to the homestead orange tree because we all know how orange trees love a corpse (don't ask - it's a whole other post).  Whilst understated elegance is an admirable attribute, Humphrey would actually be more concerned about the understated impact a shroud-in-hole funeral would have on his malnourished wallet.   Floral arrangements will be supplied by Nature....in the form of naturally occuring bluebush, saltbush, mulga and cabbage trees, carelessly arranged as God intended.  This understatedly elegant affair would likely be BYO (beer and snags), oh and don't forget a cushion because the lid of your esky may get a bit hard to sit on during the service.
The most moving tribute will be the handing-out, post interrment, of hot pink fly swats, the heads of which would be embossed with my smiling face (ala Alessi's Dr Skud). Perhaps a fitting reminder (to Humphrey) of his dearly departed maggot life-partner.

Then the Fed Ex van will arrive....