King Ted Cruz (Seriously)

A hardcore Evangelical Christian Church in Texas has "anointed" Ted Cruz as King.  You read that right.  He's officially King Ted now.

King Ted has been given a mission.  His mission is to bring about "The End Time Transfer of Wealth", i.e., to wage war on all us people who don't belong to that church, steal our money and bring "the spoils of war to the priests" of that church.

Here's video of King Ted's Daddy laying out the plan before the congregation:

And another video where he goes on about how King Ted is going to "take Dominion" over all of us:

And here's the actual anointing of King Ted as Lord and Master over us heathens:

Really.  Read it for yourself.

Honestly, Cruz.  SNL gave up satirizing you over Green Eggs &  Ham, and here you go pulling this one on them.  Will someone think of the poor comedians?

(I'm laughing to keep from throwing up.)

Maxine Powell

Maxine Powell died last week. I doubt if any of you knew who she was.

I have no doubt you have admired her workmanship.

In the early 1960s Maxine Powell was hired by an up and coming record company called Motown to run their in-house finishing school. She took raw, young street musicians and taught them how to move like princes and princesses. The graceful, sophisticated sensuality of Martha Reeves, Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, and Smoky Robinson is her doing. She taught them how to perform for the White House and Buckinham Palace while looking sexy as Hell the whole time.

She even taught them how to twerk with style when she found the Supremes practicing the shake:

“ ‘You are protruding the buttocks,’ ” she admonished them. “ ‘Whenever you do a naughty step like the shake, add some class to it. Instead of shaking and acting tough, you should roll your buttocks under and keep smiling all the time.’ Then I showed them. They were shocked that I could do it and at how much better it looked my way.”

I couldn't help remembering Miley Cyrus.  Her recent actions have been defended as simply the way she chooses to play a game that is heavily weighted against women.  Cyrus has chosen a particular way to game the system, but it is far from the only choice available. There are many women who choose to play without appealing to the lowest common denominator of the most puerile members of society.

Women Senators End Shutdown, Save Country

This isn't getting nearly the airplay it should, but apparently the group of Senators who forged the deal that ended the shutdown were almost all women.  John McCain is being given credit, but says, "Leadership, I must fully admit, was provided primarily by women in the Senate."

Male Senators Begrudgingly Admit Women Are Important

Signal boost, please.  People need to know so they can remember in November.

Housecleaning

I'm spending a great deal of time lately talking about highly personal matters.  This wasn't what I intended this blog for, so I've created another blog for that.

Whose Face Stares Out My Mirror

I'll post links to it from time to time.  So far I've talked about hydraulics, and the Doctor's Companions.

Narcissistic Women Favor Sexism

Women who feel entitled more likely to endorse benevolent sexism, study finds.

Duh, people.  My adoptive mother could have been Exhibit A.

Adoptee Abuse, i.e. You Know That Thing We're Supposed to Never Talk About? Let's Talk About That.

I found a good therapist this time.  (You'd be amazed how often that isn't the case.  Kind, yes.  Well-trained, yes.  Good?  Not so much.)  He's willing to dig down past all the obvious layers to go after the deeply buried stuff.  Right now we're at the level of dealing with being an abandoned child adopted by child abusers.  It's not a comfortable topic, but it's one that needs to be addressed.

I know it's completely against the stereotype of all adoptive parents being loving adoptive parents.  "Every adopted child is a loved child," the saying goes.  Whenever I hear that I just want to  pat the speaker on top of the head, hand her a Harlequin Romance novel, and make her sit in the corner while the grownups talk .  Because -- let's compare it to marriage, okay?  Is every bride a loved bride -- in a healthy way?  And even if she's loved in a healthy way at the altar, how many are still loved in a healthy way 2, 3, 5, 10 years down the road?

Yeah.  Now, do you honestly think it's any different for adopted children?  What happens when the "babymoon" is over and the adorable baby stops being adorable?

Yeah.

I'm not saying that all adopted children are abused.  My best friend has wonderful, loving adopted parents.  But statistically a greater percentage of adoptees are abused than children who live with their biological parents.

My sister and I were two of those children.

Whatever made the agency think that handing over newborn babies to a petty, domineering, narcissistic, self-loathing woman with the emotional maturity of a 13yo was anything remotely like a good idea was not a good thing.  Greed?  Apathy?  Naivete?  IDK, but if they fed my birthparents a line about me being sent to a loving home, then they lied through their teeth.

Imagine yourself a child and everyone is always telling you how lucky you are that your wonderful adoptive parents rescued you from a terrible beginning and took you in.  Imagine that those same parents belittle you, neglect you, beat you, and worse.

Imagine yourself trying over and over again to get help and no one believing you because those things don't happen to the "lucky" adopted kids with their "wonderful" adoptive parents.

Imagine telling your life story over and over again and every time being told flat out that you must be lying.  Those things don't happen to adopted kids.

Can you even begin to imagine the special kind of Hell this creates for abused adopted children?

Even if you can imagine that, here's the kicker.  Other children can imagine that they were switched at birth, and that somewhere there is someone out there who will rescue them someday.  Abused adoptees don't have that luxury.  We know we were rejected at birth, and that no one is ever going to come and save us.  We have no hope at all.

So we're in pretty bad shape to begin with.  A remarkably high number of men abused adoptees become serial killers:  Ted Bundy, Son of Sam, etc.  The women are more likely to become drug addicts or suicides.

But the icing on the shitcake is our social invisibility.  Nobody wants to hear our stories.  Nobody wants to know that things like this happen.  When we do speak we're told to shut up and take one for the team so that potential birthparents won't be scared off and keep their kids instead of giving them up.

But whose team are we taking one for?  The children, or the abusive adoptive parents?

There's an awful lot there folks would rather you didn't talk about.  So much so that the stopping of it has kept me from being able to talk about anything personal for most of my life.  I don't have much in the way of funny or pleasant anecdotes about my childhood to exchange with people in the process of making friends, and an excess of the sort of soul-searing horrors that should only be shared with good friends -- which leaves me little way of making good friends so I can share those stories.  Talk about a Catch-22.

House Update October 7, 2013

Yesterday we finished the kitchen countertops, after weeks of fitting, sanding, and more sanding down to 800 grit.  ("This is what happens when you ask a jeweler to build a countertop.")  The butcherblock and marble are in place, and even the butcherblock glistens like tiger's eye quartz.  The stove is actually where it's supposed to be for the first time ever, instead of moved aside to allow for work room.  The process of assigning canisters has begun, and so has the process of moving out the 1970s era steel credenza which has served as a temporary kitchen island to make room for building a real kitchen island.  We actually had three people working in the kitchen at the same time last night.  Wow!

My sewing machine is back from the repair shop and in working order for the first time since the 5yo messed it up as a baby.  It doesn't really have a place yet and most of my gear is still at the old house, but plans are in motion.

Between (and sometimes during) Karen-inspired showers yesterday we installed the amplifier on the TV antenna.  It doesn't really pick up any more stations, but at least it keeps working through rainstorms.

I'm feeling really frazzled right now.  The therapist is digging into some old, deep wounds; but at least he's beginning to understand the severity of the problem.