Find Your Darius, This Mid-Week

1) Dis…. Is a matter of opinion… Star Wars Costumes Gone Seriously Wrong.

What’s wrong with this one?

For real though, “I have a little daughter,” is almost your Get Out Of Outfit Jail pass for every weird thing a person wants to wear. Make sure you actually have one handy though, (little daughter, that is) because otherwise you’re just going to come across as the biggest creepy person ever.

Jury’s still out on this one too…

What? There must be a gadzillion Darths with black cloaks that cover all their sins. The perfect sense of humour (and smile 🙂 are not easy to find (I assume this is… a Star Wars Fan Convention of some kind? Not say, your child’s school Halloween party?) Cough.

–

–

2) Mum Wrongly Shames Man On Social Media For Taking Pics Of Her Kids

“…’He said ‘hey kids’ they looked up and he took a photo, then he said I’m sending this to a 16 yr old,’ she wrote on Facebook….”

“…’Police said if he is a registered sex offender he will be charged, this happened at Knox, be safe with your kids.’…”

The problem with this is even freaky mum’s original post simply states he asked her kids to look up for a photo. That made her uncomfortable enough to include the words “creep” and “IF… registered sex offender,” my point being it doesn’t take much at all for someone to freak out about these things in this day and age. It’s the world we live in. It’s the tools we have at our fingertips.

Even if she apologises:

“…Once it’s out there it can’t be retracted… and the retraction post has only been viewed one-fiftieth of the times the original post was viewed…”

You’re still the guy who looks “familiar” from… somewhere… Where was that again? Oh right, in an article that had the words “wrongfully accused creep and sex offender.” See, I couldn’t even bring myself to type that last sentence without also including “wrongfully accused”. Thing is, not all words are created equal. “Sex offender” packs a helluva lot more punch than “wrongfully accused”.

S-o… Just… don’t go there. Yes you didn’t do anything wrong. Yes there was some crazy overprotective mum in the picture but…. “crazy overprotective” still not as bad as “wrongfully accused sex offender”. And yup, your own kids. (Also, I always feel you don’t know the other kids, in an encounter like that. What if they whisper to you, “Gimme 100 bucks or I’m going to scream at the top of my lungs that you’re bothering me and I’m scared?” :D)

Hence the guys who post comments like, “This is why if I see some mum going crazy with 3 screaming kids I do nothing. Let em scream.” (And for the record, as much as us mums want to say the screaming and noise drives us insane, chances are it drives us less insane than it would drive you (because that would’ve happened to us like, a gadzillion times a day and our threshold is probably a lot higher) so we’re probably goods.)

–

–

3) Oo, eye candy… My Adopted Dog’s Adventures.

Spot the dog.

Spot the dog.

Spot the – never mind.

–

–

4) The Boy Who Loved Transit – how the system failed an obsession. Darius has Asperger’s.

“…Six weeks earlier, Darius had been paroled… …served two years for attempted grand larceny—“attempted” because he had signed out NYCTA vehicles for surface use (extinguishing track fires, supervising maintenance projects) and then signed them back in according to procedure. Darius has never worked for the NYCTA; he has never held a steady job. He is thirty-seven and has spent a third of his adult life in prison for victim-less offenses related to transit systems….”

“Racism in the rules,” was something I first came across on The West Wing during what seems now to be another lifetime (I haven’t watched something, a series or whatever, on tv in…. years.) To be a little more general about it however, when the Powers That Be decide who gets punished how much for which no-nos, they’re basically telling you who they really “like”. The West Wing conversation where I first picked this up was about how certain drugs carried much heavier jail sentences/fines than others – and how certain drugs were more likely used by black, as opposed to white, people.

(In other cases some Power That Be may simply not have the time or inclination to look at that, what with so many other pressing issues. Like, everything can be a pressing issue.)

Both the most beautiful and the ugliest thing about life and people is that well, nothing’s fair. But in the same way you can only shine a light with any measure of effectiveness into a dark place, and there is a lot less need or use for a light in a bright one, there is also beauty in opportunity. In my previous banking life, one of the biggest unsung erm, “talents” you could have in the job was finding opportunity before the rest of the market had seen it. That’s how you’re supposed to make derivatives money. You find opportunity, value, where the market hasn’t priced in the entire potential. You create an investment product out of that opportunity in the market that has not yet begun to trade more expensively.

There was a little imagery of a little boy on the beach that stuck with me – I think I first read it in Our Daily Bread. Thousands of starfish get washed ashore after a storm one night, and in the morning there’s this little boy who’s flinging them back into the ocean, as far as his skinny little arms can throw them, one at a time. Some jaded grownup comes along and asks why he bothers, he can’t possibly save them all – or even enough of them to make a difference – and as the little boy throws another starfish back, he says “I bet it made a difference to that one.”

All the people who get off scott-free and more for the most horrible things they do to others. Every time you see another one of those, go look for another starfish you can fling into…. the transport system? Because which would you rather be, upset with people who would probably love for you to be, or saving a starfish?

Be-sides. Think what the Dariuses of the world could do for transport!

Find your Darius. Thought for the week…

5) And with that, Miss-Skit is a single pic I forgot to put up from the Guinea Pig Chronicles, titled Saving The World, One Critter At A Time (But You Can’t Expect Me Not To Have A Little Fun Along The Way Too).

Playing with Guinea one evening, The Miss still finds time to stuff Rockstar’s home crocs with the ink markers we always have lying around for our ever-ongoing Ikea cupboard art project. Y’know, because making Rockstar go “Aaaaaaargh!! What IS this?????” is almost too easy, as she gets older – and more creative.

Hope you’re having a good week dears…