Tag Archives: cruelty

narcissists, Twitter

The last full day of our brief trip…

It’s been a bit rainy today, although it’s not been as rainy as it was yesterday. We took a walk down the hill to another hotel in town, which has a restaurant with decent food. We also spent more time at the hotel’s fabulous pool area. I will miss it as we make our way home to Wiesbaden tomorrow. On the other hand, I think we’re both ready to go home and see our dogs. We’re both worried about Arran.

I have enjoyed being at the Bareiss Hotel, but I would have enjoyed it more if not for a canine cancer diagnosis in our sweet Arran. He really is a unique soul, and we dearly love him. Unfortunately, this is just a shitty part of loving animals. If you do it right, you go through this.

I probably shouldn’t write this next bit, but I’m going to do it anyway… because it’s about Ex, and y’all know how I feel about her. I’ll keep it brief.

Ex has been tweeting about General Flynn. In her most recent tweet, she made a comment about broken military servicemembers…

I find Ex’s comments about the military very rich indeed.

Ex says, “…the same US military that says, ‘No man left behind.’ but fills the streets with homeless, mentally broken, physically challenged men and women of honor. Broken things CAN be repaired!” (I took the liberty of subtly correcting Ex’s punctuation.)

When I met Bill, he was very damaged due to the years he spent with Ex. He was barely able to survive on the amount of money he was withholding from his paycheck to send to her, as she shacked up with #3. He falsely believed that he was the sole reason for their divorce, when he was actually a victim of domestic violence. It was many years later when he finally told me about some of the worst things that happened to him during their marriage… things that would have landed her in prison if she were a man, and the abuse was reported. And yet, there she is on Twitter, spouting off bullshit about abused, broken, hurting people.

HA!

In Bill’s case, the military was a SAVIOR. It saved him from being stuck with her. Being at WAR was better than being with her. Safer, too.

I know… there’s nothing I can do about the lies she spews. But it makes me feel better to write about it. It helps me keep things from getting too twisted. Bill has literal scars from his years with her. He has emotional and mental scars, too. She doesn’t see it, though. She thinks he hurt her… and that was justification for ostracizing him from his daughters, trying to sabotage his family relations, and leaving him almost destitute, with shitty credit and a foreclosure and bankruptcy on his credit report.

The cognitive dissonance is astounding. She leaves her ex husbands and children damaged and broken and sends them out on their own with nothing. They’re still better off without her in their lives, even as they are left with significant trauma. She has a lot of nerve commenting on the military. But she is right about one thing. Broken things CAN be repaired. I am proud to be part of Bill’s recovery.

Sorry… just sayin’.

Well… I’ll be home tomorrow, so those of you who like my blog will soon see some new entries. I especially look forward to pumping some life into the travel blog. So, I hope you enjoy your Sunday. See you tomorrow, when I can type on my desktop computer again.

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funny stories, karma, law, stupid people

“Guido” and “The Giving Tree”…

This morning’s news has been downright entertaining. It’s not too often that I start the morning off with a hearty laugh, but I sure have done that today.

First, I read about a woman who is going to go to prison for at least nine years because she used a bogus Web site called RentAHitman.com to try to get her ex-husband murdered. Then, I read about a man who has cleverly rewritten the ending to the awful children’s story, The Giving Tree. Tuesday has gotten off to a good start!

She fell into a “honeypot”, trying to get her ex “waxed”… now she’s headed for the jug!

In July 2020, Wendy Wein was resolved to take the ultimate revenge on her former spouse. She waited in a cafe in Michigan, preparing herself to talk business with a man she thought was a professional killer. She hoped to hire him to murder ex-husband. Unfortunately for Wendy, the supposed hitman was actually a Michigan state trooper who had been alerted to her diabolical and illegal plans when Wendy filled out a request form on RentAHitman.com.

Wein had been fooled by the fake Web site, which she thought was genuine business, run by a guy named “Guido Fanelli”. According to the Washington Post:

What Wein found was presumably reassuring. The website promised her confidentiality. It boasted of industry awards. It showed off testimonials of satisfied customers, including one from Laura S., who had “caught my husband cheating with the babysitter.” The website bragged about complying with HIPPA, which it said was “the Hitman Information Privacy & Protection Act of 1964,” a nod to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, the law passed in 1996 to protect patients’ medical information.

Honestly, I don’t know why Wein wasn’t tipped off by the name “Guido”, but she obviously thought someone would be stupid enough to have a real Web site dedicated to murdering people. And she was… sorry… pretty stupid herself for actually filling out a request form with her real name, email address, and phone number so that a “field operator” (cop) could contact her about the deal. The form also required information about the person she wanted “taken out”.

Wein, who at 52 years old, hasn’t aged like fine wine, really thought the field operator she spoke to in her gray Ford EcoSport was a hitman. She accused her ex of being a “pedophile” and gave the cop his address, place of employment and the times he left for work and got home. Then she provided a down payment of $200 and promised to pay another $5000 when the job was done.

A few days later, Wein was arrested a few days later for seeking out an assassin. According to the Washington Post, she “pleaded guilty earlier this month to solicitation of murder and using a computer to commit a crime. Under her plea agreement, she faces at least nine years in prison when she is sentenced in January.”

RentAHitman.com was started in 2005 by a businessman in Northern California named Bob Innes. At the time he created his site, Innes was newly graduated from a network security program and thought he might like to start a business testing companies’ online infrastructures for vulnerabilities. “RentAHitman” was a play on words– Innes wasn’t thinking about “hitman” as a person who kills people for money. He was thinking of Internet hits. You know that word “hits”–which can refer to attacking a system as well as online views– not “hitting” a person and taking them out of commission.

The business venture failed, so when Innes finished his network security course, he put the domain up for auction. It didn’t sell, so he just let it go dormant and forgot all about it. Then in 2008, Innes evidently rediscovered the site and decided to check all of the emails. He was amazed by the number of messages he got asking how much he charged for services rendered. He was absolutely flabbergasted that people thought the site was really offering murder for hire and people not only wanted to hire a hitman, but some were looking for employment as hitmen!

Innes didn’t act at the time, since none of the queries he’d received seemed real. But then in 2010, he got a message from a British woman in Canada named Helen who wanted three family members murdered because she claimed they had “bilked her out of her father’s inheritance.” Innes didn’t take the request seriously at first, but when she wrote to him again, he decided to check out the people she wanted axed. He could tell that she was very serious about having them murdered.

Since the British woman in Canada was so serious about intending to kill her relatives, Innes forwarded the information to a cop friend of his, who then called the authorities in Canada. The Canadian cops found Helen, arrested her, and she wound up spending four months locked up for soliciting to commit murder. Then, once she was released from the jug, she was deported back to Britain.

The requests kept coming, so Innes decided to make the site into something that would actually do some good and save lives. He added the service request form in 2014. Seven years later, the site is still going, and still attracting “business” from the clueless. Innes even tries to give people an out before he turns them in. He sends each serious inquirer an email with two questions: Do you still require our services? And do you want me to place you in contact with a field operator? If they answer “yes”, he forwards the information to the cops.

One might think that this article about RentAHitman.com will render the site obsolete, since savvy people will know it’s a bogus site. However, it’s my experience that a lot of people are really stupid… and a lot of people don’t bother to read. And even more people don’t want to pay for newspaper subscriptions. So, it’s my guess that Innes will stay in business for awhile longer.

Moving on… someone has finally done something about the GODAWFUL children’s story, The Giving Tree…

In the past, I’ve written a couple of times about how my husband’s ex wife ruined a number of children’s stories and albums with her toxic bullshit. One story that Ex really ruined for Bill was The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Ex had a habit of comparing herself to the tree, and Bill to the selfish boy who keeps taking and taking until the tree is reduced to nothing. This is, of course, classic projection, as Bill is one of the least selfish and most decent people I know. But anyway, she used that story to mindfuck Bill, as well as at least one of her children (and really, probably all of them).

This morning, I read that an enterprising playwright and writer named Topher Payne has rewritten the terrible ending to The Giving Tree so that it’s less toxic and fucked up. Payne has a series called Topher Fixed It, and he’s redone a number of children’s stories with questionable messages. I read Topher’s rewrite to Bill and, sure enough, he got all verklempt. He said Ex has also compared their daughter to the Boy in the story.

I remember that she used another children’s book called The Little Soul and the Sun: A Children’s Parable to shame Bill before he deployed to Iraq, and she actually sent the book to him before he left. I got really pissed off because she was, once again, using children’s literature to promote her false toxic agenda. It was very inappropriate for her to do that before he went to war, too. Especially since she refused to let him speak to their daughters. I told him to get rid of the book so I didn’t have to see it, because every time I saw it, I felt the urge to throw it away. So he sent the book back to her with a note that read, “I’m not the one who needs this.”

I’m not actually familiar with the book Ex sent, since it wasn’t one from my childhood. I think it’s about forgiveness. Bill was very hurt that she sent it to him. Anyway, there’s no reason why Bill should not have been allowed to speak to his daughters before he went to war. At the time, one of them was 16, and the other was 13. He could have died over there.

I just want to offer many kudos and congratulations to Topher Payne for his epic project, fixing the more fucked up children’s stories. In our case, it’s personal. Now, Bill might be able to enjoy what should have been an enjoyable and healthy story for children instead of thinking of his mentally ill Ex. I see on Amazon that The Little Soul and the Sun mostly gets good ratings. I suspect that as is the case with The Giving Tree, a lot of people fail to see the damaging message and how it can be used to hurt, rather than heal. One reviewer gets it, though, and posted this:

I found Conversation with God inspirational, but this children’s book is wrong. It gives an example of hurting another being as an act of great love. From “Conversations with God” I understood that hurtful acts are never prearranged agreements, but acts of free choice based on a level of “remembrance of who we are” on a physical plane.

The children’s book went astray. It sends an awfully dangerous message.

Yep. And another person wrote:

The premise of this book is that you wanted to experience individuality, and decided to incarnate with someone else who “loves” you so much they will be cruel to you, so that you can learn how to forgive them.

Isn’t it actually the other way around?

When your loved ones incarnated, somehow along the way they forgot that this reality is supposed to be loving, playful, and creative. So you decided to incarnate and remind them, even if doing so might hurt you, and then you’d go on to live that better reality for yourself and others.

Yeah… real cool of Ex to send this crap to Bill before he went to a war zone. What a bitch. There are so many beloved relics from childhood that Ex has ruined, because she’s used it to promote her toxic agenda and quest to control everyone.

Sorry… anyway, it’s time to close this post. The sun is out, and the boys need a walk, and my mouse needs to recharge… and I need to stop thinking about things that are upsetting. I do love what Topher Payne is doing, though.

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News, tragedies

April really is cruel…

Last night, as I was making more travel plans, I was blissfully oblivious to the horror unfolding in Paris, as its famous Notre Dame cathedral smoldered in a massive fire. I have been to Paris twice, but never managed to tour the cathedral on either visit. I do remember seeing it as we walked along the Seine, but I also remember my former best friend’s dad telling me back in 1992 to skip climbing the tower at the cathedral. I do like visiting beautiful churches in Europe, but it’s not really a focal point of what I do when I go places. Paris has a lot to see, so visiting Notre Dame was never at the top of my list of things to do there. I regret it now.

The cathedral was being renovated when it caught on fire, just as it was at Longwood when Ruffner Hall caught on fire. It seems that renovations can raise the risk of sudden fires.

It seems like April is often rife with tragedies. I never paid a lot of attention to it until around 1999 or so, when students at Columbine High School were confronted by the murderous wrath of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as they shot up the school. Other school shootings would occur during April, like the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. But it’s not just the shootings and bombings, or even T.S. Eliot’s famed words that make April cruel…

I remember in the spring 2001, when Ruffner Hall, the most historic and beautiful building at my alma mater, Longwood University, was being restored. I was then a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, about to finish my second year of a three year dual master’s degree program. The weather was warm and sunny, and I had visions of the end of the semester dancing in my head. I’m sure it was the same at Longwood, the college from which I had graduated seven years prior. In 2001, Longwood was still known as Longwood College. It was renamed Longwood University in 2002.

On April 24, 2001, just before students were about to take their final exams for the semester, the Rotunda caught on fire. Fortunately, because the building was being renovated, just as Notre Dame also was, priceless art and historical relics had been removed before a raging fire consumed the original building. That beautiful building held so many memories, not just for me, but for all of the students that passed through it after it opened in 1907. Longwood’s name has been changed a few times in its history. Before each name change, there has historically been a fire. There were also fires in 1927 and 1949; both occurred just before the school’s name changed.

A picture of the original Rotunda taken in the 90s, when I was a student. Inside Ruffner is a statue of Joan of Arc– better known as Joanie on the Stoney. We also have a statue of Joan of Arc on a horse called Joanie on the Pony. Paris’s Notre Dame, likewise, has a statue of Joan of Arc.

I happened to live in the Colonnades during the first two years of my college days. My freshman year, I lived in Tabb Hall, which connected to Ruffner. At night, when the building was closed to everyone else on campus, my buddies would sneak into the Rotunda area and box. I only recall watching this one time. I’m surprised they were never busted, to be very honest. I’m sure nowadays, they have security cameras. But it was a lot of fun to sneak into Ruffner and mess around after hours. Unlike the bell tower at Fordham University, there was no danger involved… The lights were on and there were no steep, spiral steps to climb… and no holes to pass through on landings. At the front door of the building, there was a slate step that had a deep indentation worn into it from decades of students walking across it.

Sophomore year, I lived in French Hall, which was also connected to Ruffner. French is no longer a residence hall, but in the 1990s, it had the largest rooms on campus. Some rooms held four students. Most had at least three. My room only had three students for part of the first semester. We had a roommate who moved in mid semester– she had been my roommate’s freshman year roomie, and she had to move from her room because she and her original sophomore year roommate were caught smoking marijuana. She didn’t come back in the spring. That was a pretty stressful, yet awesome year. I lived among friends.

The other two years, I lived in South Cunningham. The Cunninghams used to be the center of campus. They were eventually razed for a new student center. My former university is becoming less recognizable to me, as new buildings are being built and old ones are being rebuilt.

Ruffner was also rebuilt, and it now looks just like it did before the big fire of 2001. It took four years to rebuild the historic hall to its former glory, and during that time, Dr. James Jordan, an esteemed anthropology professor and archaeologist who taught at Longwood for many years, did several archaeological digs. He found many long buried relics among the ashes. The damaged step was found and when the building was reconstructed, a replica of the historic indented step was made for the new building.

As I heard about Notre Dame last night, I couldn’t help but remember the Rotunda at my alma mater, and how it’s been rebuilt. Maybe it’s not the same… Notre Dame has a history dating back to the 12th century. It took many years to build it, but only one fiery evening to destroy it. On the other hand… even in destruction, there is opportunity for new growth, new discoveries, and rebirth. I’m certain that in the ashes of the fire, new discoveries will be made, new knowledge will be gleaned, history will be made and recorded, and the cathedral will be rebuilt. In fact, French billionaire François-Henri Pinault has already pledged $100 million euros to rebuild the cathedral (and hours later, at least 200 million more has been pledged by other donors). French president Emmanuel Macron has also vowed to rebuild the cathedral.

This is an opportunity for people to unite. It’s an opportunity for architects, craftsmen, construction workers, archaeologists, students, teachers, holy people, and the public to come together in solidarity. Many new discoveries will be made and the cathedral, just like Ruffner Hall, will be rebuilt stronger than ever. But it will take time, effort, and money. I may never see the end result in my lifetime. Still, as bad as this is, it could have been much worse. As sad as it will be to dig through the wreckage, I know there will also be excitement and fascination. Every situation– even the worst ones– offers opportunities. So I will try to focus on that, instead of tragedy of the tremendous loss wrought by sudden fire.

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