condescending twatbags, politics, religion, stupid people, wingnuts

The strange case of the scary, satanic, plastic spoon from Sonic…

It’s Sunday morning, so I think I’ll write a post about wacky social media posts by Christians that go viral. Why is it that Jesus loving, God fearing, Christian types are so often white males who want to declare everything fun and fantastic as evil and satanic?

Yesterday morning, as I was cracking open my bloodshot blue eyes for the first time of the day, I opened Facebook and noticed that a college friend had commented on a viral post. My friend had written her reaction to a picture of a plastic toy that was put in a “Sonic Wacky Pack” for a Mississippi man’s daughter. The Mississippian father, name of James Charles Phillips, had written a lengthy post about how his daughter commented that the toy “felt evil”.

Because her father has obviously indoctrinated her with right wing religious bullshit, the child was afraid of the fluorescent green spoon, modeled after the scepter carried by Masters of the Universe character, Skeletor. She threw it out of her dad’s truck… evidently opting to litter, and befouling God’s beautiful creation, Planet Earth. How very Christian.

I decided to share the post with the comment, “This is fucking stupid.” At this point, a number of my friends are laughing with me about this guy’s wackaloon post about the evil spoon from Sonic. Some have agreed with me that this man’s post is also kind of skeevy, since it’s a dad praising his good little daughter for recognizing a piece of plastic as “evil”. One friend pictured the guy wearing a MAGA hat. Another said she got “Jim Bob” vibes, as if the daughter is his property.

My first thought, upon looking at the “scary and satanic” spoon, was that the top of it reminded me of a woman’s reproductive system. Maybe dad was skeeved out because the horns on the scepter look like fallopian tubes. They live in Mississippi, and that’s a place where a woman’s reproductive rights are likely to be stripped away any day now.

Yikes! It really does look like a woman’s reproductive innards. Maybe dad thinks that’s satanic, too. This photo came from Wikipedia and is in the public domain.

I was curious about this guy, so I went to the original post. I noticed that, at this writing, he has well over 16,000 followers on his Facebook page. Who in the hell is he to have so many followers? Especially since he doesn’t write particularly well and lives in Mississippi? So I did a Google search, and discovered Revival in Courage, a Web site that is connected to him. Weirdly enough, the site appears to be based in North Carolina, but when I read the description of the self-described “Constitutional Cowboy”, and look at the person in the pictures, I’m pretty sure it’s the same dude. A link to his very public Facebook page confirms it.

Mr. Phillips appears to be a political activist, who does “motivational speaking and teaching”. He served in the United States Marines, and raises Longhorn cattle and “nine little patriots” with his “bride” on their farm. I looked around the site and wasn’t surprised to find that it’s basically advertising right wing political beliefs, with dire warnings about the United States’s inexorable slide into communism. Once again, I can only shake my head at the lunacy. I don’t think this dude even knows what communism is.

From what I can see on their home page, members of the Revival in Courage group believe that public health mandates are left wing strategies to take away our liberties as Americans. They deny that COVID-19 is a public health emergency, and that ivermectin really does effectively treat the virus. They are vehemently against wearing face masks, and they’re especially against children being required to wear masks.

They are against vaccines for children, even going so far as connecting them to abortion and declaring them “genocidal”. Naturally, they’re against abortion, and want it completely abolished.

This group believes that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” and the results were fraudulent.

This group is against gay pride, and gay rights. They are for forcing children in school to pray and read the Bible, even though not everyone is Christian. They think the schools are full of “filth”… I guess things like the satanic Skeletor spoon from Sonic are “filthy”, as is any discussion of sex education, and any books that might actually give children liberal ideas or help them think critically.

I see that this group deems itself “patriotic”, and refers to members as “patriots” and “minutemen”. And, looking under the speakers tab, I see there’s a list of people– James Charles Phillips among them– who are promoting the idea that they can “save” America from liberals who want to “take away their rights”. One of the speakers is Dr. Jeffrey Barke, who wrote a book titled Covid-19: A Physician’s Take on the Exaggerated Fear of the Coronavirus. The book actually gets pretty good ratings on Amazon, probably because it caters to the many people in the United States who are frighteningly wedded to the extremely conservative “Trumpian” mindset. However, there are only five reviews posted, so my guess is that the ratings are inflated.

I’m sitting here amazed, since a viral Facebook post written by some religious wingnut with extremely right wing ideas, has caused me to fall down yet another rabbit hole, when I could be reading Jennifer Grey’s life story. Still, I was amused by the many posts on the guy’s Facebook page. A lot of people were telling him, in no uncertain profane terms, how fucking stupid this is… and how he shouldn’t be teaching his children to be so terrified of plastic spoons that look like women’s reproductive organs and glow in the dark. In fact, many people have rightly called what this dad is doing as emotional abuse. Isn’t life scary enough without kids being afraid of satanic influences at Sonic? I guess it’s only Chick-Fil-A for this guy’s family from now on, since he’s so afraid of his kids being desensitized and influenced by evil demons at Sonic. If you have some spare time and need a laugh, I recommend reading some of the comments. They’re hilarious. Many people are pointing out that it’s just a plastic spoon!

Mr. Phillips has even posted a video in which he calmly tries to explain himself… I’m not sure he quite makes the mark with what he said in the video. I’m not going to post it here, but it’s on his Facebook page, and at this writing, is still public. He doesn’t sound like Marguerite Perrin of Trading Spouses, at least… but like her, he probably thinks tarot cards and gargoyles are “dark sided” and satanic. What a bunch of nonsense.

Get the hell out of my house in Jesus’ name I pray!

On a more serious note, though… I am a bit scared of these crazy right wing nutters who think they need to “save America” from communism. These people have the unfortunate combination of inherent stupidity, hyper-religiosity, no critical thinking skills, and no experience beyond what they’ve known their whole lives. Add in their love of weapons, and you have people who really could make America a dystopia akin to Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale. Now, to me, that is scarier than Satan ever could be…

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funny stories, mental health, politics, psychology

Dastardly Trump dumper gets caught with his pants down…

This morning, Bill made me aware of a disturbing story on the God page. I don’t follow God anymore, but sometimes if there’s a compelling or funny story, I will venture there manually to catch the buzz. And this morning’s scoop was literally buzzworthy (flies, y’all) and potentially stinky!

It seems that over the past ten years, 59 year old Matthew Guyette of Greenville, Ohio has been suffering the shitty intentions of his neighbor, 70 year old retired high school teacher, Jerry Detrick. Detrick admitted to the dirty deed when he was finally caught in the act of publicly taking a shit on Guyette’s yard at the “asscrack” of dawn… 3:15am on Sunday, May 30th. He’s also repeatedly urinated on Guyette’s lawn.

Guyette commented that he busted his neighbor, thanks to his new dog. He got up in the middle of the night to walk the pooch and literally caught Detrick with his pants down when he happened to glance over the hedge he shares with another neighbor. Again… this has been going on for over ten years!

According to The Smoking Gun, when Guyette confronted Detrick mid squat, the man simply stood up and walked away. Detrick was quickly identified when Guyette provided his description of the dastardly defecator to the police.

Why would Detrick “doo doo” such a thing? It can’t be good for neighborhood relations, right? Well… it turns out that Detrick is a Trump supporter, and Guyette and his husband are Biden supporters. Detrick told the police that was why he’d been on his serial pooping and running spree. He evidently thought he would get sympathy from the cops, who were unimpressed, and cited him for littering. Guyette notes that over 80 percent of the people of Greenville voted for Trump, so maybe Detrick thought the cops would be understanding.

But given that Detrick has been showing his ass for over TEN years and he openly admitted to being the culprit, I tend to think there’s more to the story. My guess is that Detrick may not approve of the gay lifestyle. He’s probably also a little bit crazy.

Talk about neighbor wars! This one got downright shitty!

Detrick lives a couple of blocks from Guyette’s residence and walks past it often to visit his favorite bar (at least he doesn’t drink and drive). Guyette posted on Facebook about busting him, adding that the stealth shitter also has a habit of leaving the napkins he used to clean himself after dropping his deuces. Detrick is not a very neighborly guy, is he? But at least Guyette wasn’t his only victim. According to a Facebook comment Guyette made, Detrick’s targets also included the local museum and some of his other neighbors.

I took a peek at Matthew Guyette’s Facebook page. He seems to be taking this incident with a good sense of humor, which is highly commendable. He has left his post about this Trump supporting stealth shitter public. At this point, over three hundred people have dropped by to offer their thoughts. Some of the comments are hilarious!

I’ll be honest and say that when Bill told me about this, my first reaction was anger. I would be absolutely LIVID if someone did this to me, and I would be pressing full charges– to whatever extent I could. I also would have busted Detrick years ago, because it would have become an obsession for me. It’s the height of disrespect and completely uncalled for behavior. But I will admit that I can laugh about the story, because it is so bizarre. It also reminds me of why I really think a lot of Trump supporters are either crazy or stupid… or just plain disrespectful.

Reading about this reminded me of a story I blogged about from two years ago involving two guys who turned out to be Trumpers. On March 31, 2019, then 50 year old Charles Eugene Ferris, and Christopher Hicks, then 36, two guys in Rogers, Arkansas, were sitting in the backyard drinking beer when they got the bright idea to test out a bullet proof vest Ferris was wearing. Ferris asked Hicks to shoot him, and Hicks obliged. The shot hurt, and that pissed off Ferris, so he had Hicks try on the vest. Then Ferris shot Hicks.

When I read about this incident, I knew instinctively that these two “mental giants” were Trump supporters. There was nothing at all in the article about their politics. But I just KNEW these two supported the orange turd. Handling loaded firearms and experimenting with bullet proof vests, especially while also loaded on alcohol, just isn’t something most liberal types are likely to do. I realized I could be wrong, though. So I went searching for verification, and sure enough, I quickly and easily got it.

Someone who followed my OH Facebook page commented. She is a Trump supporter, but has some basic respect and class. Unfortunately, one of her friends didn’t like that I was sharing my opinions and left me a pretty rude comment. I wrote a lengthy rebuttal, with the serious question why normally decent and normal people would want to be affiliated with guys like Ferris and Hicks… and now Jerry Detrick, who scarily enough, was once a public school teacher. This was my closing paragraph on that piece:

…the point I’m making is that it was obvious to me that these two guys in Arkansas are Trump supporters. It’s clear by their stupid behavior that they are. I could tell without even getting confirmation from a Facebook page, although I did at least take the time to confirm it. If I can so easily tell which political leader a person supports simply based on their asinine behavior, it really says something about that leader, doesn’t it? Do you really want to be lumped in with those people? Think about it.

I emphasize that last sentence this time, because two years later, this theory I have about the correlation of crazy behavior and support for Trump has, yet again, arisen. It’s not about Trump being a “conservative”. He’s not really a conservative. He’s just someone who says and does outrageous things, and emboldens the crazies among us. Why would any reasonable or sane person want to be affiliated with people who shit on their neighbors’ lawns over their political choices? Why would you want to share politics with guys who get drunk, don bullet proof vests, and shoot each other? Guys… I knew these people were Trumpers without even knowing them personally, based ONLY on their ridiculous antics!

In fairness, though, I am also reminded of another story I heard about a few years ago, also involving a former public school employee. Back in 2018, Thomas Tramaglini was the superintendent of Kenilworth Public Schools in New Jersey. But then he got busted for repeatedly leaving piles of shit near Holmdel High School’s track and football field. Johnathan Martin, the cop who busted him was the school’s resource officer, who was on high alert when Tramaglini’s leavings were spotted on a daily basis. Martin was promoted to patrol officer last year.

Meanwhile, Tramaglini’s life has been pretty “shitty” since he was caught dumping and later pleaded guilty to one count of defecating in public. Tramaglini filed a lawsuit against Martin, Police Chief John Mioduszewski, Holmdel Township and other unspecified officers. The suit alleged that Martin unlawfully took a mugshot of the former superintendent and circulated it.

Tramaglini resigned from his job, which paid about $148,000 a year, and was subjected to harassment, as were his children and other family members. As to why he was shitting by the track when he could have used one of the portable toilets about 30 feet from where his crap was found, I don’t know… He claims he suffered from “runner’s diarrhea” and even produced a medical certification from a doctor. But he never offered any proof that he ever sought “help” for his problem until after he was caught on camera with his pants down. So obviously, it wasn’t something that greatly distressed him, even if the piles of excrement might have bothered those who later found it. I’ll admit that I can’t tell who Mr. Tramaglini supports politically… but he’s obviously got some issues with entitlement, hostility, disrespect… and, of course, excrement.

I previously wrote about Mr. Tramaglini on my original blog. That story was married with another one about a school in North Lebanon, Pennsylvania where students were being required to “smile” on demand or else. That school was also in the news because the school’s then Assistant Principal, Benjamin Wenger, along with High School Principal Jennifer Hassler and Middle School Principal Brad Reist, were also accused of throwing around a sex toy during school hours. I don’t know who those fine educators supported politically, either… but their conduct as “educators” is definitely questionable, unprofessional, and perhaps even execrable.

Anyway… I commend Matthew Guyette for not taking this shit lying down… and maintaining a sense of humor and compassion, despite his neighbor’s crappy attitude. Hopefully, now that Jerry Detrick’s dumping habits have been uncovered, he’ll clean up his act and learn how to use a toilet… preferably in private!

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