edshots

because it gives you the chance to put out there what you want put out there.

It gives you the chance to look like a genius. Or an idiot.

It allows you to show how deep you can think. Or how shallow.

It also gives the chance for the world to see how much you have to say. Or how little.

I didn't realize how little I wanted to say over the last many days. I had lots of opinions, just not that many I thought to go out over the e-waves with. Part of that is because I haven't really cared to. Part of it because I sat here in front of the screen and couldn't think of what to go on about for 100 words or so.

The business has heated up lately at work, so I'm sure that I'm going to have plenty of thoughts coming up. Some of them aren't fit for public consumption. Some of them are barely fit to recognize and move on.

Maybe I'll get better at sharing. Maybe not.

As I write this the smoooooth sounds of a Buffett song waft through the air around me. I've been listening to his music more lately. Maybe, just maybe that's taking some of the edge off the world. Maybe I need to be listening to the news more. That would put the edge back on.

Over the past week I have had the opportunity to see how the law and reality don't mix.
I had a case where a six month old child had a bruise on his ass the size and shape of a hand. I had a case where a kid so didn't want to go to see his old man that he banged his head on the wall and threatened to kill either the old man or him self. I also get to deal with a scoutmaster asking a kid if he would be interested in providing or receiving oral sex.

The law in PA states that abuse is an act that causes nonaccidental injury. Recent legal decisions have eviscerated that definition so that a mother who swings a belt at her kid, trying to hit the child in the butt but connecting with the eye instead, can say that it was an accidental injury because she didn't mean to pole the child's eye out.

That's bullshit.

I think that there needs to be a movement to remove "legalese" and replace it with common sense terms in law. A nonaccidental injury doesn't mean that you meant to cause a different injury, it means you acted in such a way that a purposeful act caused injury.

And don't get me started on that "I didn't mean to hit the kid-I just did" crap. It takes intention for a person to swing an arm hard enough to give a kid a black eye.

Last night as I was walking home from the game, I noticed somebody had left something out on the stoop. This is a person that I'm not particularly fond of, although we generally get along pretty well. As I'm walking by it, I thought it would be a nice trick to move it. Not far, but far enough to cause trouble. I've done this kind of thing before, playing practical jokes that are mostly harmless isn't outside of my code of conduct.

Then I started to think. I wasn't thinking of doing this out of purely fun reasons, I also thought of how it would tick off and inconvenience the person. That turned it from a practical joke to a dirty trick. And dirty tricks are not within the code of conduct.

I usually scoff at people who look at motives as compelling causes to either forgive or condemn behavior. That's part of the reason I think bias crime laws are wrong. You committed a crime it doesn't matter if it was because of bias, it was wrong to do. I usually believe that it doesn't matter why you did it, you did it. In this case I made an exception to the rule.

I left it where it was.

One of the interesting paradoxes in the world is that how the more you want something, the less effort it sometimes takes to get. Other times when you give up on something, what you get instead is even better. Accepting the way things are rather than the way you want them to be makes life a lot easier and enjoyable. I mean why waste time wishing that you had two scoops of ice cream when you could be eating the scoop you have.