Another open thread for personal stuff, continuing from here.
As usual for these threads: no trolls, no arguments, supportive comments only!
Categories
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
We Hunted The Mammoth
According to excommunicated family members, most notably his son Nathan, the guy has always been an abusive, violent asshole. He’s also been devoutly religious from his early days and was active in extreme fundamental Baptist churches before he founded his own church. He also was protesting and picketing against dirty jokes and filthy language when he was still in college, so this is a lifelong thing for him.
It is strange that he was a brilliant civil rights attorney and then became a raging asshole, but he was disbarred a long time ago, first from Kansas and then Federal courts, for… being a raging asshole although the formal reason was perjury. He hasn’t been able to practice law since 1985, IIRC.
I can’t imagine that someone could hate this much and not have some level of self loathing fueling it. Because… Phelps hates everyone and everything. I can’t imagine that not starting with himself.
Folks like the WBC give my husband heartburn. (He’s a Southern Baptist.) Then again, even the KKK disavows the WBC, that’s how bad they are. (Link is safe, just kinda a thing of beauty where the KKK and the WBC butt heads.) When even the Klan doesn’t want to be affiliated with you…
Wow. That guy sounds like one hot mess.
That seems likely. I can’t help but feel glad he’s not going out lauded as a hero or martyr by his church/family.
This has long been my theory about Roosh, as well.
Wow to that 2016 book, and utter agreement about wasted brainspace on the WBC thing – they protested at my old college quite a bit, and were generally atrocious people and I’ve actively avoided them since.
Auggz – I was able to try a sample of circle lenses at the optometrist when getting my regular prescription filled. My natural color is grey,and I was trying to go for green, so a small change. This was 10ish years ago, and they might have gotten better since, or it might have been just a not being used to seeing myself like that thing, but I kind of hated them, the color looked really fake to me, although I didn’t have problems with the size of the circle or anything. My suggestion is ask about samples before you buy a box; most of the eye places around here are quite obliging in that way.
I’m very happy for both Ally and LBT’s new therapists. Hooray proper medical care! 🙂
Ally, I do not know what happened in your life to make you fear this person so much, but I can tell you that allowing the fear to take over means that he wins. I think of people like him as emotional and psychic vampires, draining life and joy out of those they vamp on.
I know that it is hard, having had a number of situations/events in my life that terrified the living hell out of me for a long time. I am so glad that you are seeing a therapist. Hopefully he/she will be able to help you find the strong person within you.
(sending a big cyber hug) You deserve to live a life created by you. And you can have that, especially with the love and support of your friends. I wish you freedom and much happiness.
I looked at the picture of Hadji. What a beauty! I am glad that you were part of each others lives for so long.
Never heard of the series. Have they been out for a while?
Ahhhh…if only I had the legs! Oh, I wonder if one can get kitty print cloth out of which to make harem pants or wide-leg pants…
Oh yeah, that’s the whole church’s modus operandi. It’s basically just a morally bankrupt scam.
Samantha – yes, The Cat Who series was written between 1966 and 2007 or thereabouts. They’re still in print, I think; I’m buying the digital versions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat_Who…
I don’t really have the legs for leggings either, but for these tabby ones, bad luck, I’m wearing ’em! 😀
That’s a good question about kitty print cloth. There’d be some available in the heavier cottons they make for craft, but would that be suitable for making trousers? Hmm.
Just saw this article on Feministing: http://feministing.com/2014/03/18/school-bans-boy-from-using-my-little-pony-bag-because-its-a-trigger-for-bullying/
I wonder if the MRAs et al have noticed? I would pay money to hear their flip flopping responses/rationalizations. I don’t have the intestinal fortitude to lurk in their boards though.
Poor kid. He looks so sad about it too. And that is a great backpack.
Geeze…I read the article and the way they treated that kid is shameful. Why should HE have to give up something that he enjoys, that causes no harm to anyone, just because a bunch of brats bullied him? Who are the adults here? Did the brat pack threaten the teachers?
Give me a break. And now that poor kid has to carry that around with him forever. Why are the adults protecting the aggressors?
@Samantha
[Content note: abuse, violence]
Thank you, Samantha.
To elaborate, he sexually abused me when I was 12, and he abused my sister as well. He had no respect for anyone’s boundaries – one time he tried to force me to smoke weed, and he threatened to assault my brother with a game console. He even forced me to fight a kid I knew for his own amusement (I didn’t end up fighting the kid – I just did some very light wrestling with him that didn’t result in any injuries). And he laughed at the two of us because he thought we were “fat” and that we were fighting “like girls.” He humiliated and tormented me and my loved ones, and he was a master of emotional manipulation.
He wasn’t in my life for very long, but he was probably the most abusive, dangerous person I have ever met. You’re right that I shouldn’t let him win. Even today he has control over me through my memories of him (if that makes any sense), but he doesn’t have any right to do that. I don’t know how I can get him out of my mind, but hopefully my therapist can help me out.
(more cyber hugs) While I never had one abuser over a period of time, I have been raped four times, once after being pulled off of my horse by some really horrid guys. So, I have some idea of what you have gone through. What makes it worse is that it happened when you were a child. The memories and pain go deeper for kids, since they do not have the adult defenses in their psyches.
Ally, forgetting is not something that will ever happen. But you can learn to de-activate the deep pain, fear and horror attached to the memories. For me, I had to re-live each rape, being conscious and present for each memory. I had to learn to recognize that *I* was not the pain, the fear or the horror. And I then learned that I did not have to be a victim, nor was it EVER my fault. I could choose, instead, to be whole, alive and present. The best revenge we can have is to never let the aggressors, the rapists and the just plain cold-hearted bastards have any part of who we are.
The thing is that it is a journey…an often painful one. But it is worthwhile because you then claim full possession of your own sweet self. You have a right to your anger. Learn, with your therapist, how to use that to grow and, perhaps, help others eventually find their ways back home.
I will be thinking of you often, with all the support I have.
I did some looking into that 2016 book. Wow. This writer is off in David Icke territory. Apparently, he wrote “2012 Apollyon”, and even his fans noticed a lack of world ending catastrophe. So he just repackaged the eschatological wankery for a new payoff -er, revelation. Reminds me of Hal Lindsay, who wrote “The Late, Great Planet Earth” over forty years ago. He then came out with various updates explaining why the giant seven-eyed lamb hadn’t shown up yet. The problem with nonsense of this type is the damage it does to the fearful and gullible. Then it can become dangerous nonsense. The aphorism that applies here is. “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
I had a sweet memory from last night at Home, this morning. Nothing exciting, just sitting on the couch reading, with kitties on either side and one on my lap. Louis came in from the garden and stood warming his hands at the fire, and said it looked like the ground wouldn’t be frozen too much longer (which means spring planting won’t be too far away; we do major reworking of the garden every year). He came over and asked what I was reading and if it was interesting; I said I thought it was. Then he said he was getting tea, and did I want some, and went into the kitchen.
I was sitting looking after him (you can see the kitchen door from where I was, but not into the room) and just so happy. There was that sense of wonder, even after seven years, of being there in my real home, of belonging, of being perfectly content, and knowing it’s not that long a wait before I’ll be there for good. Then Louis came out with the tea things on a tray (very pretty white teapot with pink flowers on it) and asked Thomas-the-tabby if he might sit on the couch. He put our big grey boy on his lap, which lasted about 2.5 seconds. Tom never was a lap cat in his eight years on earth and hasn’t changed his attitude in the twenty years across the veil. “I’m sorry, but I do need to sit next to my lady!” Louis said. He asked me to read from the book, and that’s all I had time to sit and remember.
Memories like that are the best start to a day.
Doad now has to figure out what to say about the book to his ‘rents. Should he try to explain to them how obviously off-the-wall it is, or should he just nod and smile?
Do they know how he feels about that sort of stuff? Have they sent him books like this before?
Not this particular type of thing, but they go off on goofy shit all the time. My mother-in-law thinks she has prophecy powers. We tend to do a lot of smiling and nodding around them.
Gad.
My instinct is to lie and say it never arrived, but that doesn’t really help. I guess smile and nod? Do they forget about it soon enough if you and Doad don’t make a thing of it?
Damn, “don’t make a thing of it” sounded all wrong, sorry. Downplay it, maybe?
CONTENT NOTE: ANIMAL DEATH
We’ve euthanized so many patients tonight. I’ve taken seven bodies to the morgue so far, and when I left for this break, there was another patient being put to sleep. And that’s just in my department (Emergency) – Clinic handles some of the euthanasias as well. I know it’s for the best, ’cause they were suffering, but still. JFC.
Still, I guess it could be worse: I could be one of the doctors who are actually administering the drug.
All the hugs, emilygoddess. 🙁