(elements of this have been sporked from elsewhere)
I really hate halloween... no scratch that... I really really really hate halloween.
The truth is that I already don't like most of the children in my immediate neighbourhood. Some of them within earshot spend their entire lives from what I can gather, screaming and crying at the top of their lungs either at each other or at their poor frazzled parents.
Why then do I need them showing up at my door and demanding sweets? What would happen for instance if I were to walk 9 doors up the street and ask for lollies? People would think that I'm insane, and then probably ring up some gentlemen in blue to take me away in a fun car with flashing lights.
Miranda Devine in today's Daily Telegraph writes:
http://www.news.com.au/opinion/miranda-devine-asks-why-are-all-men-made-to-feel-like-fiends/story-e6frfs99-1225944489870
In 100 different ways every day the same scenario is played out, reflecting a profound and largely unspoken shift in the way decent men view small children.
These are just ordinary men, fathers, grandfathers, brothers, uncles, who have been made to feel like criminals around children and obliged to suppress their natural, healthy instinct to protect the most vulnerable members of our society.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to be portrayed as some criminal pervert paedophiles. I certainly don't want children showing up at my door just to invite the suggestion. In fact if it came to it, I'd rather be known as a paedophobe; that way the sweet seeking sprogs would scavenge, sally and sortie somewhere else.
No sir, I don't like Halloween, or as it properly should be called "Scab Day" and nor should anyone else. No-one in their right might would vote for a "National Annoy The Crap Out Of Your Neighbours Day" would they? Then why send your kiddies out to do it for you?
Really the only people who actually benefit from it are the sweet manufacturers Messers Cadbury, Nestlé, et al. who have used this fake holiday to foist the sale of their diabetic inducing produce onto the public.
In yesterday's Age in Melbourne there was an article looking at the failure of programs to curb childhood obesity:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/child-obesity-a-losing-battle-20101025-170ya.html
The evidence from the fat battlefront so far shows that many schemes by federal and state governments to prevent childhood obesity have failed to make a significant dent in the girths of young Australians, Productivity Commission researchers have found.
Their report assesses 27 child and student-focused anti-obesity programs whose aims include promoting exercise, improving diet and cutting time spent in front of television and computer screens.
Can I just add a 28th anti-obesity program here? Don't send out increasingly corpulent children out to collect lollies and sweets! When I was a kid in school there was usually one fat kid per class, just one. I think that schools must have had some sort of allocation program to allocate fat kids. Now it seems that every class has more than just the odd fat kid but loads of them. Is that why teachers unions are calling for smaller class sizes? When I was a kid, classes of 34 weren't uncommon. Do 34 kids then equal 24 kids now?
There are theories that halloween started off as something a lot less sweet based. In 16th Century Scotland during the older "All-Hallows-Even", traditionally people would go from door-to-door, dressed up, and then telling jokes or even dancing to get something from their neighbours.
Anyway the upshot is, if children want sweets from me this year, they better be ready to dance for them. It will give me a reason to dress up as an organ grinder and madly yell "Dance! Dance my pretties! Dance for your sweeties! I'm gonna get you, and you're little dog too!". Then throw their reward at their feet so I can laugh malevolently as they scramble around like the pathetic sugar laden terrors they are.
Better yet, make their parents dance. That way the kids will cry and blame their parents for not loving them enough. And thus the cycle continues, children screaming and crying at the top of their lungs either at each other or at their poor frazzled parents.
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