them.

they move among us.

little girls wearing pink dresses and matching pink bonnets who move around among us undetected.

innocent-looking. some might say cute. i don’t. but some might.

always holding firmly on to the hand of a surrogate adult life-form clone creating the appearance of normalcy in their day-to-day meanderings as they move around from place to place always staring, subtly taking in information from their surrounding surroundings.

occasionally, when data collecting has been of a particularly slow and pedestrian nature, they might concede permission to a greyscale miniature suited male child monitor unit to tag along for the precise purpose of adjectival and accumulatory preposition enhancement, you know, to speed things along.

and so they continue, day by day, to move. among us.

they must be stopped!

and they can be.

or at least they could be if the power lay with them.

if they really were just innocent little girls wearing pink dresses and matching pink bonnets.

but everyone knows the power lies in the box. the hamster type creature [a very inaccurate description but for lack of a better one, “hamster type creature” is going to have to do] that lives in the box. and directs proceedings.

proceedings involving little girls wearing pink dresses with matching pink bonnets attached at the hand to surrogate adult life-form clones and occasionally tolerating the necessity of the greyscale miniature suited male child monitor unit [adjectival and accumulatory preposition enhancement]

it seems all too hopeless.

and it is.

you should go.

now.

sh!

Weekly Photo Challenge: (Geometry)

when i saw the topic for this week’s photo challenge was geometry i quickly ended up at this photo which was the unfortunate consequence of an inspirationally creative idea colliding with a unfortunate forgetting of a necessary tool to pull off said idea…

every year i have cycled the 109km [67.7295 mile] Argus Cycle tour in Cape Town, South Africa, both the largest individual times race in the world and one of the most beautiful in terms of scenery along the way… and for most of those years i cycled in creative costumes, largely involving the use of pink tights [simply because i had them left over from some children’s drama i once did] and this particular year the pink tights were done and i had to get more creative and so managed to convince a friend of a friend of mine to cycle with me in fish net stockings…

we may have forgotten to put on the required amount of sun tan lotion. in fact we may have forgotten to apply any sun tan lotion at all. not a wise thing to miss when you are about to spend 6 or more hours in the hottest hours of the blazing sun while cycling and so this criss-cross pattern was the result and the geometry stayed with us for a couple of months…

which brings me to my second pic and a much less personally painful one taken on a trip to a youth conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and this geometry-laden pic of a variety of shapes scattered below the walkway of the Petronas Twin Towers… the circles, triangles and squiggles combining and contrasting helping create what almost feels like a musical kind of symmetry to it…

 

 

[For the previous Photo Challenge on the theme of ‘Foreign’ click here]

“Weekly Photo Challenge: (Foreign)”

Famous stuffed dolphin No_bob encounters famous Petronas towers

a few years ago i attended a youth conference in Malaysia and so naturally i took the world’s most famous stuffed dolphin, No_bob [I was going to call him ‘Bob’ but he doesn’t bob] with me… this picture in front of the Petronas towers signifies the tourist experience for me – feeling very very small in front of something that is very very big – new language and culture and people, experiences and food all loom big against the smallness of who i have become while visiting and the fame of my most famous thing [No_bob] is as nothing to the enormity of my situation…

this was all reinforced by the absurdity [to me] of this ‘Forbidden Fruit’ sign we saw in the entrance of the hotel we were staying at – the one apparently banned due to its incredibly overwhelming stench and the other because of the stain the juice of it leaves behind which is near impossible to remove…

and lastly, this sign we saw on a train amused me no end… clearly everyone had heard of the recent kissing epidemic in Kuala Lumpur where people would just randomly lock lips with strangers for hours on end and this train’s manager had a strict “Not on my watch!” policy, although we never could quite understand the penalty for breaking this particular taboo… [the writing accompanying the signs being all in Bahasa Malay was a bit of a tongue twister for me]

[For the previous Photo Challenge on the theme of ‘Silhouette’ click here]

 

hey, i just met you, and this is crazy, but could you please-look, after your baby…

my wife and i love children!

other peoples! we love the bit where we get to give them back afterwards. and then return to our childrenless lair.

[okay, it’s not quite a lair, more an intentional community house in the inner city area of kensington, philadelphia… but still, no children living with us in the house at this particular point in time]

so kind of like a choose-your-own-[children]-adventure of sorts – we get to decide when they’re around and get to retreat when they get a little too much for us, or if we just want a break.

and then there was the time i went and watched ‘Scream’ at the local movie house… only problem is, i was trying to watch ‘The Avengers’ at the time… fortunately all that action happened during the trailers and the child was stopped or removed or something before the film began, but it definitely felt like a place that needed to go on a list of places particularly loud and screamery kids are not all that welcome at.

i imagine if you are a parent of a young child [not ‘kid’, you say ‘kid’ and the goat people get riled!] that idea will make you just a little bit sad, and i get that, or at least i would if i wasn’t being so distracted by all the people without children who have all jumped to their feet and burst into spontaneous applause.

because it is a topical issue right? and one, which i imagine for the most part, will have people-with-children on the one side and people-without-children on the other. there will be some exceptions, but i am guessing there will not be too many people-with-children clamouring for more childrenless environments and not too many people with no children whining about the lack of screaming and general chaos in said areas.

“children should be seen and not heard” – for the most part i don’t like that one – especially in places where celebration is happening like at a wedding or in a church service or at a party, i think that a certain messiness adds life to the occasion and i am all for a little bit of hum, or laughter or childlikery. but it is when it crosses the line and becomes a baby crying or a tantrum being thrown where i do appreciate a parent who acts quickly and decisively.

“children should be seen and not herded” – that feels more true – how does the saying go? ‘Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, call a child a kid and some old person slash teacher slash grammar police sergeant will charge in brandishing their “kids are children of goats, you are talking about children which are children of people” sign…’ Maybe not be an actual saying, but it should be!

for me i think the chief point is distraction – if the noise/actions of the child begin to take away from the focus of whatever the event is that you are attending, that is where it becomes a problem. the rising muttering and angry stares being flashed in your direction you should receive as a clue.

so for most happenings of a celebrationary nature, let the little children come to me i say… until they start whining, that is… or fighting, or smelling… then let the little children come to you…

what do you think? [and tell us if you have children or not before commenting]

Weekly Photo Challenge: (Silhouette)

in Americaland the hockey stick is a symbol of a women’s sport whereas in Africa it is the epitome of a fast-paced man’s [and womens] astro field battle of skill, perseverance and chance-taking…

I would call this a half-silhouette as the light comes brightly from the side giving a sense of the depth lurking behind this pose while concealing enough to keep you guessing as to what is really being thought about. [hint: adding bacon bits to a pot of mashed potato]

 

 

This full body shot asks the question, “Is the body blocking out the sun, or is the shadow blocking out the body?” Kind of a chicken/egg question, but with less barnyard metaphorical.

[For the previous Photo Challenge on the theme of ‘BIG’ click here]

red.

Weekly Photo Challenge: (BIG)

this is one of my favourite photos of myself and it is titled “Hebiggermeless” based on the verse in John 3.30 where John the Baptist, talking about Jesus, says, “He must become greater; I must become less.”

it is the essence of Christianity and Jesus-following and problems always erupt when we forget that and this picture helps keep me grounded by reminding me how pathetically small i am compared to something relatively tiny that God spoke into being.

He is bigGER.

and prompts the chant/song i often use when i go speak at places:

God is Bigger than my box
He’s Bigger than my theology
He’s Bigger than my understanding…
He’s Bigger than me.

if all people who claimed to be Christian lived with this in mind, the world would be completely transformed.