Halloween is stupid

[metalhead]

There has been cases of it happening, as shown in my link and snopes even says the razor blades and pins do happen (albeit rarely). Whether that is demented people getting the idea from the urban legend, or it was the kids hearing of the legend and doing it themselves to get attention, I'm not risking my kid eating it if it was obviously tampered with, and I hope you wouldn't let your kids do it either.

That said, my kids don't do the 'house to house' trick or treating (well, the oldest one does now with her friends), our town has a 'downtown business' trick or treating, where the businesses hand out candy. 30 stops by walking a few blocks is nice.

I'm willing to bet that a kid is way more likely to be hurt or killed by a car while out trick-or-treating than by candy that has been tampered with. Snopes even says that the few verifiable cases only involved minor cuts or pricks. But few parents think twice about letting their kids go out. Then as soon as they get home the first thing the parents do is freak out that the candy might be tampered with. It don't make no goddamned sense! It's like, where is your head at when it comes to risk assessment?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

So I gave out candy to maybe fifty kids. I feel good.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I'm willing to bet that a kid is way more likely to be hurt or killed by a car while out trick-or-treating than by candy that has been tampered with. Snopes even says that the few verifiable cases only involved minor cuts or pricks. But few parents think twice about letting their kids go out. Then as soon as they get home the first thing the parents do is freak out that the candy might be tampered with. It don't make no goddamned sense! It's like, where is your head at when it comes to risk assessment?

Sure, there is a chance they can get hurt going to the park,doesn't mean parents shouldn't take their kids to the park. Oh, hey, there is a chance in anything we do, so hey kid, let's just ignore that you are running around without your shoelaces tied.

Would you take a food item off the store shelf and buy it if it's already been opened? Same idea, takes little time to look it over.

 

[Sommerswerd]

My kids dressed up like Black Panther and Killmonger. People were saying "Wakanda Forever!" to us all night. My kids candy haul was unquestionably the biggest I've ever seen for any Halloween as a parent. One of the counselors at my kids daycare had his yard all done up with inflatables and strobe lights and was blasting Rammstein so loud you could hear it for blocks. My son declared it was "The Best Halloween Ever!" It was awesome.

As always, before I go out with my kids (and after we get back) I put out a bucket of unattended candy on the steps. The teenagers take all of it in one swoop instead of taking one each, so I just dump more candy in it. They come back and take the whole thing again. I refill again, until I'm all out of candy. The joke's on them, cause candy isn't good for you. ... but it makes them happy so I'm happy to let them game the system while I get rid of the past year's surplus candy. Win Win

 

[Birdjaguar]

About 20 kids showed up tonight. Less than last year. Leftover candy will be picked through for choice items and the rest given to the candy dish at the office building where our think tank resides when thinking.

 

[shadowplay]

Thank you very much for your kind donation.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Ok Tim, here you go.

Spoiler :

Impressive

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I remember liking it more than Halloween, because the kids actually had to work to get their candy! If you don't sing you don't get any.

There was one neighborhood I lived in for a couple of years in the '70s where a few people demanded that kids sing for their candy. I got bonus goodies because I actually sang a Halloween song (which I have just realized that I still remember, 45 years later... ).

Kids dress up as whatever they want...

There is no requirement for Halloween costumes to be scary.

I remember one year when I went trick-or-treating with my cousin. I wore a pair of coveralls and a cap belonging to my grandpa, and when asked what my costume was, I announced, "I'm a mechanic!".

(it was a quick and easy costume, given that I didn't actually have a real one that year since we were still living on the acreage and it was a last-minute decision to go into town).

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I was watching some TV show of minimal merit, Halloween episode, and some trick or treater kids came to a door. Two cute kids in pretty ordinary costumes, with the third kid who was in jeans and a shirt. When asked why he didn't have a costume he said "I'm the Hulk." Dude says "The Hulk? Isn't the Hulk supposed to be green?" Kid says "Only when I'm angry. You wouldn't want me to get angry," and makes a meaningful gesture with the candy bag. Perhaps the most brilliant last minute costume ever.

 

[HoloDoc]

Good move. Frankly, that would have been a good move at the time. Not the younger part, necessarily, but whatever else might have been under the buckskin fringe, there was a really snotty personality. There was a costume contest, which she did not win, and it was pretty clear that in her world she was absolutely owed the prize. Even the people who seemed like they had arrived with her pretty much abandoned her to her gripes.

The guy who won, based on the judge's interpretation of the "best party animal" theme, was a guy who obviously heard "party" at the last minute, drew a smiley face on a paper plate and mounted it to his sunglasses, and hit the place rolling. His antics were hilarious from start to finish, but nearly naked Indian chief girl who never cracked a smile apparently didn't get it.

Considering my track record with women, I guarantee I would have ended up marrying her. I make bad choices.

I'm willing to bet that a kid is way more likely to be hurt or killed by a car while out trick-or-treating than by candy that has been tampered with. Snopes even says that the few verifiable cases only involved minor cuts or pricks. But few parents think twice about letting their kids go out. Then as soon as they get home the first thing the parents do is freak out that the candy might be tampered with. It don't make no goddamned sense! It's like, where is your head at when it comes to risk assessment?

A little girl and her aunt(?) got hit by a car while trick or treating around 6:30 pm last year. I had driven through that neighbourhood about fifteen minutes earlier, and my girlfriend at the time, who was younger than me, was out with her friends in the same area. Little girl died, tragically.

 

[HoloDoc]

Forget razor blades, the real threat on Halloween is liver supplements.

Source.

Suspicious Halloween 'lolly' handed to trick-or-treating 11yo in Alice Springs

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Suspicious Halloween 'lolly' handed to trick-or-treating 11yo in Alice Springs
ABC Alice Springs
By Emma Haskin
Updated about an hour ago

PHOTO: A Korean friend of the mother said the 'candy' was packaged as a skin whitening drug. (ABC Alice Springs: Emma Haskin)
RELATED STORY: Is Halloween just a bit of community fun or an American travesty?
RELATED STORY: Ebola virus spreads to Halloween outfits
A family in Alice Springs has alerted authorities to a suspicious package collected by their 11-year-old daughter while trick-or-treating on Wednesday night.

Anastasia Byrnes said her daughter Lilly was going through her stash of lollies when she got home and came across the small Korean-labelled package.

"She got home at about eight o'clock and of course she checked her loot," Ms Byrnes said.

"She tipped the bag out and was like 'oh, look at all these lollies!'

"It looks like a little tear-open towelette bag, and then you open it and there's two yellow pills inside with some numbers on it, like little capsules."

Ms Byrnes described her initial reaction upon seeing the tablets as "shock".

"What is that? That looks like a drug. Who would make a lolly to look like a drug?'" she said.

She said she was not sure what the pills were so asked a Korean friend.

"She said it was a skin whitening drug, which I was really shocked to hear," she said.

"I don't know if it was put in there by mistake or someone was actually giving these out to kids last night. It's really, really disturbing."

The outback town has a strong tradition of celebrating Halloween, given the large American population associated with Pine Gap who live and work in the town.

Police say pills likely to be a 'supplement'
Superintendent Bradley Currie said Northern Territory Police in Alice Springs were aware of the sachet and had identified the contents.

"The green sachet covered in foreign writing was likely a supplement containing glutathione," he said.

"Glutathione is produced by the liver and also found in fruits, vegetables, and meats.

"[It is] also supplied within supplements and available over-the-counter in chemists or online."

He said parents should be aware of what their children brought home from trick-or-treating and discard any confectionery that was not clearly identifiable.

Plea for families to check lolly bags
PHOTO: Part of the appeal of trick or treating for Halloween is getting a huge stash of lollies. (ABC Alice Springs: Emma Haskin)


Ms Byrnes posted an image of the pills and packaging on social media in an effort to warn other parents to check their children's lollies from Halloween.

 

[metatron]

Forget razor blades, the real threat on Halloween is liver supplements.

To be fair the intent of the "donor" was in all likelyhood not for the child to consume the supplement but to cause the parents offense, at which the donor apparently succeeded.

What the article doesn't tell us is that Ms. Byrnes is a "person of color" and her daughter is what Anglospherians insist on calling "mixed race" (the husband and father appears to be quite "white").
What the article also doesn't tell us is that Anglosphere racism is unusual that accross most of the world the much bigger thing is something akin to what Anglospherians know as colorism.
Hence the existence of all manner of skin whitening products.
What the article does tell us however is that this is Alice Springs.

We are left to do some - apparently easy - math here.

Btw: Can we stop using phrases such as "covered in foreign writing" when it's one of the really easily recognisable ones. Like, i'm not asking for much here, Greek, Korean, Cyrillic, Arabic.
This seems like a moderate request to me; i'm not asking anyone to tell Armenian and Georgian apart or anything.

 

[HoloDoc]

To be fair the intent of the "donor" was in all likelyhood not for the child to consume the supplement but to cause the parents offense, at which the donor apparently succeeded.

What the article doesn't tell us is that Ms. Byrnes is a "person of color" and her daughter is what Anglospherians insist on calling "mixed race" (the husband and father appears to be quite "white").
What the article also doesn't tell us is that Anglosphere racism is unusual that accross most of the world the much bigger thing is something akin to what Anglospherians know as colorism.
Hence the existence of all manner of skin whitening products.
What the article does tell us however is that this is Alice Springs.

We are left to do some - apparently easy - math here.

Btw: Can we stop using phrases such as "covered in foreign writing" when it's one of the really easily recognisable ones. Like, i'm not asking for much here, Greek, Korean, Cyrillic, Arabic.
This seems like a moderate request to me; i'm not asking anyone to tell Armenian and Georgian apart or anything.

Alice Springs is pretty cosmopolitan. Far more so than anywhere else in Centralia. So I'm not sure what point you're making about ethnicity here. Approximately 20% of the population there is Indigenous, and that's not including the population of itinerant workers, who aren't included as part of the Alice Springs population in the census. I've seen estimates for their population as being around 90% indigenous, out of between 4-6,000 people. There are also sizable Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese minorities. But not many Koreans.

Also, since almost no one in Alice Springs is likely to speak or read Korean, the idea that skin whitening products were given to a child specifically to offend the parents is pretty silly. How can you offend a parent by being racist if they don't actually know you're being racist? The concern is that it looked like drugs.

 

[Bamspeedy]

It could have accidentaly been mixed in, it could have been deliberate to scare people thinking it's drugs, or it could have been a racist to make a statement, or it could have been planted by the recipient (the parent or the 11 year old) to play the victim card (not likely, but possible). 'Skin Whitening' pill, my first thought was a racist did it as well, the fact the mother is 'not white' increases this probability. As to the recipient likely not being able to read the label, well, some people don't think all of these things through.

 

[HoloDoc]

It could have accidentaly been mixed in, it could have been deliberate to scare people thinking it's drugs, or it could have been a racist to make a statement, or it could have been planted by the recipient (the parent or the 11 year old) to play the victim card (not likely, but possible). 'Skin Whitening' pill, my first thought was a racist did it as well, the fact the mother is 'not white' increases this probability. As to the recipient likely not being able to read the label, well, some people don't think all of these things through.

Mixed race children and Indigenous people are treated far better in Alice Springs than pretty much anywhere else in Australia. Not saying this isn't a possible explanation, just saying it's pointless to jump to conclusions. Especially as no one else has come forward with this issue. If 50 mixed race children all got the same pills, and 0 white children, then we can start jumping.

 

[Bamspeedy]

It doesn't matter how the community as a whole treats minorities, it only takes one individual to do something nasty.

Without knowing who did it, it is indeed hard to speculate. Pass them out to every child it greatly increases the chances of getting caught, give it to 1 and there is a good chance you won't get caught. Was it because this family knocked on the door of someone with no light on, a 'halloween scrooge' that other children did not stop at that house? Did some homeowner run out of candy, was drunk and grabbed the first thing they saw?

 

[HoloDoc]

Without knowing who did it, it is indeed hard to speculate. Pass them out to every child it greatly increases the chances of getting caught, give it to 1 and there is a good chance you won't get caught. Was it because this family knocked on the door of someone with no light on, a 'halloween scrooge' that other children did not stop at that house? Did some homeowner run out of candy, was drunk and grabbed the first thing they saw?

It's especially difficult as apparently Mrs Byrnes and her daughter don't know exactly which house they got the "candy" from. If it's an isolated incident, I'm inclined to believe it's an accident. If more reports start coming in - and I doubt it, or they already would be, given it's the day after Halloween and the story broke hours ago, and presumably even earlier in the local Alice Springs news - then we might find a reason.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Even the razor blades and pins only happens to one family at a time, not a whole bunch. Sometimes that is because it was a prank from a sibling or a child wanting attention. Without knowing for sure that is what happens in every situation and that some of these cases were done indeed by demented individuals, even they know doing it to every piece of candy is going to get them caught, whether it's from someone checking the candy right away or from them having left over candy in their house if police come knocking.

Whatever the case, it's apparent not just 'white suburban' people should be checking their candy as implied earlier in the thread.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

From this thread I have learned that Americans (and yes I'm including Canadians in that, because... well we've been through this) seem to think that "porch lights" are a thing that everyone just has all across the world.

 

[HoloDoc]

From this thread I have learned that Americans (and yes I'm including Canadians in that, because... well we've been through this) seem to think that "porch lights" are a thing that everyone just has all across the world.

We have them in Australia. I'm old enough to remember when they were a rarity, but most homes have them now.