SometimesBites

His smug-shot tells the truth of who he is. Under the smile he was taught to produce if there's a camera in the room, all I see is a dark husk that's been burned hollow by his horrifying compulsions and behaviors.

I have a hunch she's been stoically medicated for the entire trial. If you can't stay sweet, stay numb.

Her posts all basically say, "Look. I saw a thing. Other people say stuff about the thing." Nothing to offer. No value added. She's that person in the office you desperately try to avoid meeting alone in the break room.

Stumbled across an interesting short documentary on the LuLaRoe scam today. Anyone else seen it?

Well, we already know what a coercive, cookie-stealing monster he really is.

It's the tradition of the Brown's giving each other Claddagh rings. Similar in nature to their old tradition of "mock" desserts and rewriting their personal histories PRN.

I've only kept current with Mykelti and FT in a cursory way--momentary snippets of the show, glances at social media when this forum links to it, etc. Even so, the dynamic between them is disturbingly familiar to me. I went into my first marriage with the same headstrong romantic blindness that I see in Mykelti. And just like FT is for her, my husband was a terrible choice for me--and the fact that our marriage was a glaring error was obvious to EVERYONE. I was deeply entrenched in a religious ethos that treasured the submissive, Proverbs 31 woman; getting married and starting the engine on that happily-ever-after machine was an all-consuming goal. All my closest friends were pairing off and getting engaged; meanwhile, I was desperately hoping my Mr. Right would show up. The trouble was, when he did show up he was all kinds of wrong--and part of his wrongness was being incredibly possessive over me and having an ego that got off on having someone show him romantic interest. Mykelti's post (Twitter?) extolling the glory of her one year anniversary didn't make me think, "Well that's so nice...they must actually be happy." Instead, it was like a nasty flashback to how really, REALLY hard I worked to pretend my marriage was everything it should be, everything I desperately wanted it to be. Despite every red flag imaginable, I put my head down and bulled my way to the altar, then spent 18 years trying to prop that mess up all by myself. My impression is that Mykelti was desperate for validation, and after a lifetime of being taught that the pinnacle of a woman's life is to become the object of some dude's romantic interest, she dutifully put on blinders and forged ahead. If I had a crystal ball, I think it would tell me she is already often quite miserable, but that she'll stay in the ever-growing misery even after the point when she can't stand FT anymore, if only to prove that she knew what she was doing when she married him. I honestly feel so sad for her.

I don't care that the place is in the boonies, and it's cute from the outside. But the rooms are absolutely god-awful. The wallpaper bonanza screams 'IT'S THE MID-1980s AND MY HOUSE IS EARLY-AMERICAN CHARMING!!" The gobs of fake flowers in every freaking room set my teeth on edge, and the carpeting is just butt-ugly. From the outside, there is a strong farm house feel, and I'd expect to see original hardwood floors, light/bright paint on the walls, simple breezy curtains, etc. Leave it to one of the Browns to get a venture so very, very wrong.

The Browns are drawn to super-hyped, quick-money bullshit like vultures to road kill. I love that one of the FAQs at IIN reads: "IS IIN A “RIP-OFF” OR A SCAM?" and their answer begins: "No way." Whew--what a relief. Rest easy, oh gullible marks--we're not a scam because we say we're not a scam! Of all the things Janelle might apply herself to, being a health/wellness/nutrition coach is absolutely the most asinine choice imaginable. If I was selling classes on home organization and my house looked like a candidate for Hoarders, I wouldn't make a lot of money. If Janelle actually got healthy, people would probably throw money at her--the diet industry is wildly lucrative and god knows the world loves a success story. But even the most desperate have eyes, for crying out loud! Her lack of cred is literally visible to the world. This venture for Janelle is like Meri with Lularo--she got snared by the hype, threw money at it, and allowed herself to be suckered into the idea that she could make money doing the gig herself.

Marathoning in preparation for S8. I love the exuberant evil of Negan, and I don't even mind his long-winded monologues. But it only took the first exposure to a Negan scene to make me all the way over two of JDM's recurrent mannerisms: the patented lean-back, and the habitual lip-licking. Enough of that, already.

Can we assume Hunter is still here? This is the same place that had to be upbraided by Superintendent Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria earlier this week for racial slurs having been scrawled outside the doors of black students. Criminy. https://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/active-shooter-reported-at-air-force-academy-preparatory-school/ ETA a working link (It was a weird phony active shooter story.)

You can buy a used copy on Amazon or elsewhere. Any funds you spend will only go to the immediate vendor.

I'm not one to judge any woman for her wardrobe. Those "No woman over 40 should ever wear..." clickbait titles make me itch to slap someone. But...I am convinced the wear-leggings-everywhere thing is a fashion trend that people will look back on in several years sort of like we now look back on the huge shoulder pads and "Hammer pants" of the '80s: OMG, what were we thinking??!?

There ya go.

If you haven't seen The Principle Tumbler, here's a bit about Christine that does describe her relation to Ervil, and thus Anna LeBaron: http://politicsrusprinciple.tumblr.com/post/113638995826/christine-lebaron-allred-at-her-high-school

Kody has made a whole lot of tweets that are explicitly and staunchly conservative; I have a hunch he's voted for a LOT of people who don't give shit one about his freedom to practice plural marriage. Ow. The irony, it burns.

Boo fucking hoo. Whatever difficulties Kody faces by being in simultaneous relationships, well, them's the breaks. He's living the exact lifestyle he signed on for, under the strictures of a religious ideal that values patriarchy and subjugation of females (no matter what high-flown bullshit they spout about the glories of womanhood). Plural marriage is a narcissist's dream, and we've all watched him strutting around like a tool, shaking his hair and announcing to all and sundry (even when no one asked or gave a frig), "I AM KODY! I HAVE FOUR WIVES! AREN'T YOU IMPRESSED WITH MY MANLY PROWESS?" In a fairly recent episode of tee-vee counseling, Meri and Kody both admitted that polygamy has long provided a way for them to avoid dealing with their marriage troubles because there are all those other wives he can turn to for distraction and recreation. The lifestyle is bound to set the women in competition with each other, because NONE of them is getting her relationship needs met. Kody, on the other hand, can turn tail and head off to a different woman whenever the going gets rough. Viewers have repeatedly seen him do this on camera, and he's explicitly stated that a wife's emotional life is HER business--not his. Kody's life a hell? Not even close. Kody's life complicated by the emotional trainwreck he's authored? Yes--and he earned it. No sympathy or empathy here for that beady-eyed douche canoe.

MrSmith, if you'd like to see the original convo about trashgate, it starts here:

She addresses that somewhat in another tidbit from their book. (Brace yourself for more skeeve...) “Adam was not completely committed to his fundamentalist faith and I was happy to welcome him to the LDS church. Not long after he converted, we began courting. Soon we were married in the temple, but my husband wasn’t really interested in either his new faith or the branch of fundamentalism he’d been raised in. In fact, he had very little spiritual conviction. “His family, however, fascinated me. I would tell my friends, “My in-laws are polygamous.” I was proud to know people in a subculture. They were a novelty. “One of the reasons I was so transfixed by Adam’s relatives was that they were so outwardly normal. In fact, they were completely conventional and contemporary. They didn’t live behind closed doors or practice any strange customs. They worked, they participated in the community, they sent their kids to local schools. My in-laws didn’t dress strangely, as some fundamentalist sects did. The women were strong and independent and had an equal say in family affairs with the husbands. “If only I’d been as enamored with my husband as I was with his family. Unfortunately, Adam and I had problems right from the start. We weren’t spiritually, emotionally, or romantically compatible. We lived together for only six months before he moved out.”

Janelle knew Kody and Meri well, and in fact, even after she and Meri's brother were pursuing a divorce, the three of them regularly hung out together as friends. Janelle did decide to make a definitive move, but according to Kody he had already been scheming on Janelle as a Number 2 Wife and hinting as much to Meri. Not sure where all those bolded details come from, but none of that was in the book. To be honest, the only place I've heard most of them are in various speculative posts on forums. Relevant excerpts from their book: “…I had a sense that Janelle and I shared a destiny. The minute I met Janelle’s date [someone she was dating after first husband, Adam Barber, split], I said to Meri, ‘She’s getting in her own way. She doesn’t want to let herself have what she truly wants, so she’s dating another guy.’ I’m not sure Meri quite understood what I was hinting at. “I couldn’t shake my spiritual awareness that Janelle and I would one day marry. I’m not sure exactly when this insight came to me—it wasn’t born out of the same conventionally romantic attraction I had to Meri. It was a different feeling entirely, one that had more to do with spirituality and intellectual compatibility [than] romantic love. However, I couldn’t help [but] notice that in addition to her first-rate mind, I found her extremely attractive…. “Meri and I were living in Montana and Janelle sometimes stayed over at our place. One evening, after the three of us had spent the day together, just as we were getting ready for bed, Janelle made an unusual request. ‘Meri,’ she said, ‘can I have a moment alone with Kody so that I can talk to him about something important?’ “…At the time, Meri and I were living in a cabin with a giant living room and two small, unpleasant bedrooms. Meri went to bed, leaving me and Janelle sitting on the junky furniture I’d picked up at a yard sale. “Janelle was forthcoming. ‘I think I belong in your family,’ she said. “I was flattered and pleased, not to mention relieved. Months earlier I had told Meri about my interest in a relationship with Janelle—but it was more of an impromptu suggestion than a serious proposal. So it felt proper that Janelle should make the official opening move. In many ways, it’s more appropriate…. “Quite often in our faith, it’s the woman who approaches the family she is interested in.”

The Colliers and Dargers are two separate plyg families they inflicted on introduced us to.

Stray thoughts: Meri and Mariah. Because of the emotionally isolating nature of polygamy, and Meri's apparent emotional neediness, and because she had just one child, Meri always used Mariah as an emotional prop and enmeshed with her daughter to a disturbing and dysfunctional degree (remember when Meri and Kody were supposedly mulling over in vitro, and they had to involve Mariah in the conversation? Ew--just no.) Meri's behavior during the catfishing not only flew in the face of everything they privately and publicly espoused, but she dragged her daughter into it with her, even though Mariah adores her father and was telling Meri straight up that she was being duped. It's no surprise to me that Mariah's now got a huge wall up; I imagine every time she sees Meri come shuffling and shrugging in her direction with that hangdog look on her face, Mariah wants to run like hell, every cell in her body howling, "NO...you will not reabsorb me like a hungry amoeba!!" I think Meri's best bet is to be sure she's fully admitted her failure and apologized to Mariah, and to tell Mariah that, because she understands and respects her, she'll give Mariah whatever time she needs. Basically, "Honey, I love you with all my heart, and you know that I'm right here, always and forever." Then BACK THE FUCK OFF. Mariah loves her mom; if Meri can just let her go, Mariah will come back when her instincts tell her that Meri won't try to psychically consume her again. Miss Lonely Heart. I really agree with the assessment that Meri is deeply alone, and once again I think polygamy can take most of that indictment. Sure, in theory plural marriage should make you less alone--and that's the luminous party line they repeatedly feed viewers: "Golly gosh, sister wives have a bond that poor, benighted monogamous women couldn't understand in a million years!" But they talk out both sides of their collective mouths. Polygamy sets them in competition with each other for every single scrap of personal relationship and resource. When your "husband" is with you, the last thing you want is any horning in your time by a sister wife. Other than Robyn, the wives all know damned well that if Kody is not under their roof, they'd best make themselves scarce so as not to look like a usurper or buttinsky. I'm a persona who absolutely craves alone time, and even I can't imagine rattling about in that big house like a pebble in a barrel, only child gone from the nest, husband rarely around (even when she actually needs help with things like home repairs? Jesus, what a bred-in-the-bone asshole Kody is!), staring down your middle age and encroaching menopausal years as more of the same nothing, locked in even tighter by having made your life a public spectacle. What a pit of despair. I'm not saying she's a victim or that she has no way to get out, I'm just acknowledging that everything in her life from childhood forward promised her that adhering to plural marriage would make her life better, and it has done nothing but corrode her sense of self, rob her of agency, and feed her the lie that if she could somehow just somehow be happy with her shitty life, all the pieces would fall in place. It's really, really tough to break out of a literal lifetime of indoctrination. I don't like Meri, but I do feel empathy for the desolate rut she's living in.

Janelle has been making sounds about her fitness and food habits ever since they did the first episode a gazillion years ago where the three OGs went to a gym for the first time. She had a small window of time where she actually made some visible progress, but it's so painfully obvious that it's now simply blah, blah, blah. A lot of people with chronic weight issues (raising my hand) can cite chapter and verse all the best practices for losing weight and getting healthy--but saying and knowing ain't doing. For crying out loud, Janelle, you're on television. WE CAN SEE YOU.

Well sheesh...SOMEONE has to be there to scream "NIKE," ya know! Joshie went out in the big bad world like a grownup, and look how that turned out.

I adored that moment. So quick and so practiced, so parental, so puppet-masterish--and Kody actually kept his yap shut. He may still be tolerating that kind of BS right now, but someday that patented "shut up, Kody" touch is going to go way sour.