Dillards 40: Majoring in Grifting

[HideousGreenShirt]

That is not a family update - it's a Dwreck update. "Jill had a play date/conversion attempt" is not an update! "Israel and Sam were also in attendance" does not count as a family update!!! 

He is the actual worst.

Is it possible some nerves connecting to his brain were tweaked during his dental work and his negligence to the aftercare allowed them to rot his brain? 

[pamplemousse]

27 minutes ago, Georgiana said:

Well, on the Rod threads today we have discovered that SOME people consider American Food to include GOOD WEENS and weenie gravy.  Wish I was joking.  Mr. Hawkins, however, just CANNOT get enough weenies in his mouth.  Weenie gravy is REAL "man food eating".  

I hope this was not part of the "American Meal" the Dillards served.  

<spoiler deleted so you are not tempted to click on it and see the picture>

Yuck. That looks like someone drank a bottle of Pepto-Bismol on a full stomach and puked it all up. Yeah, I know, it's probably those red hot dogs in some kind of flour or milk gravy...but now I'm feeling a bit nauseated.  *urp*

ETA:

@HideousGreenShirt That assumes those nerves that would connect to DeWreck's brain ever were present. I'm not sure they were to begin with.

[singsingsing]

I have no idea how they met the Muslim family, but supposedly Derick is now ministering to international students at the local university. My guess would be that this is the family of one of the international students.

I can't think of anyone more ill-suited to ministering to international students than this joker. "Hi, welcome to our home, we helped elect the maniac who wants to ban you from our country." WTF? Did they stop to check if these people were from one of Trump's blacklisted countries before they let them in or what?

[AtlanticTug]

If I were a Muslim, or any other "heathen" religion, though as a non-practicing Catholic I suppose I am, I cannot imagine a less pleasant experience than having dinner with these people. Like I would literally rather eat out of a dumpster.

There is NO WAY that the two of them, particularly Derrick, would be able to hold themselves back from "purposing to" enlighten them on the truth and the error of their ways. Or refrain from talking about Jesus 90% of the time. While forcing them to eat the "best" steaks made by a hubby...in a non-stick pan on an electric stovetop. Yeah, I don't think so.

[HideousGreenShirt]

@pamplemousse well I did wonder if he has a brain at all but he did get a degree from a legit college so...

Wait! What if his dental work was actually a cover for getting him lobotomised so he could fully assimilate into the Duggarborg? Gotta get rid of that pesky free-thinking somehow.

(Please pick this up Radar/tabloids.)

[Cheetah]

Weenie gravy????? That's about the nastiest looking stuff I've ever seen.  Ugh.  Like... what's in the toilet about 5 minutes after the end of the hot-dog eating contest...

[Georgiana]

37 minutes ago, HideousGreenShirt said:

Is it possible some nerves connecting to his brain were tweaked during his dental work and his negligence to the aftercare allowed them to rot his brain? 

It's possible that the work and his subsequent disregard of aftercare have saddled him with chronic pain, which can cause a person to display a sort of "change" in personality.  While some people believe that Henry VIII's personality change was brought on by a brain injury, there are many who believe that his sudden personality shift was largely due to suddenly being forced to live in continual pain.  That is how drastic the shift can be.

I don't think we take chronic pain as seriously in our culture as we should, but scientific research is showing that pain takes up a quite large amount of space in the brain and can impair functionality.  It's something that can be very difficult to learn to live with, and we don't give those who are able to live with chronic pain as much credit as we should, especially when the pain is not "visible" (aka the person appears to be otherwise able bodied).  

This does not in any way excuse Derick, but we should be mindful that he may be living with physical hurdles that we cannot see.  And those may be impacting his ability to function in the larger world.  I sometimes wonder if Derick's resistance to getting a job is a cover for the fact that he CANNOT currently work a standard 9-5, sit in an office chair job, and that given the Duggars' political stances, does not feel comfortable disclosing that he has a disability or requires accommodation.  Yes, we've seen him running, but many people who are able to be reasonably to very physically active cannot be sedentary for 8 hours without accommodation.   Or maybe he requires medication that makes him too foggy to do accountant work reliably and is resistant to taking a lower level job.  

And there's another adult in that house that is making excuses: Jill.  True, she was raised this way, but if we aren't allowing Derick any excuses, we shouldn't allow her any excuses either.  Everyone has to grow up sometime, and I personally am done mollycoddling Jill.  I think that Jill is the way she is BECAUSE she was so coddled as the golden daughter at home, and I don't think anything is going to help her more than a good, harsh dose of reality.  IF her husband is having issues finding work AND she is not stepping up, I don't much care why.  She's still failing her spouse and her kids.  

And to those FJ posters who live with chronic pain: you are amazingly strong people.  

[AtlanticTug]

42 minutes ago, socalrules said:

Wait, so no one else is confused about the part where Derick says that Jill met the Muslim family at the park for a play date with Jill's sister? Since when do Duggars have play dates at the park? Which sister? How would a Duggar sister meet a Muslim family? Color me confused.

My guess is that Derrick is highly inarticulate and when he said :"Last night, we were able to have a Muslim family into our home for an American dinner after Jill and our boys met them at the park for a play date with Jill’s sister" what he actually meant to say is Jill and her sister (likely Jessa) went to the park for a play date and there were some brown heathens around so Jill invited them into our home for baptism under our shower rack.

Otherwise I have no idea where Jessa or anybody else in that family would meet a Muslim family and strike up a relationship close enough for play dates. Not like they are in any need of people with young children around...

[Audrey2]

Whenever I see another Duggar's thread is hot, I think, "Who is courting/engaged/pregnant/delivering." When the Dillard thread is hot, I think, "What stupid thing has Derick said/done now?"

[cascarones]

@Georgiana I think that's a very fair and articulate point, I'll also offer up that he might have caught something that just really wore down his physical strength and mental state. As much as people are concerned on here with his health, I'll share that when I had mono as an adult I looked worse than that, not even counting when I had migraines on top of it. I'd go to work, then usually be told to go home, at one point my boss was pretty blunt that I was uncomfortable and distracting to look at, like a train wreck. It wasn't as if I wanted to look emaciated or in the mirror myself. Though I think I hated the rebound calorie hoarding look more and was a bit of recluse when I got puffy and people speculated I was preggo. Thankfully, my system found equilibrium and I melted back to normal size. So I hope if there's an underlying medical issue, that whatever it is is working itself out of his system over being chronic.

Maybe this will be good for the Dillards, more exposure to other lifestyles for Jill, using their native language and hopefully some really honest conversations with college kids who are in the full throes of questioning and self-identification.

 

[Firebird]

Was that weenie gravy made with Jill R.'s pink drink, Plexus? That was nasty...I'll take Dr. pimple popper over that any day.

[VelociRapture]

@LiterallyBananas Here's the Duggar family summaries thread I put together. Read through the summary for Jill and Derick (fifth down) - it may answer your questions.

 

[eleanora3]

5 hours ago, JenniferJuniper said:

There are pictures of him out there.  In a couple he looks like his uncle James.

I've seen them, but something seems so off to me! There's an occasional photo and no posts about how cute he is or how Izzy loves him or anything like that. It's so unlike them.

[PennySycamore]

That "weenie gravy" does look supremely nasty, doesn't it, @Cheetah?  

[snickers34]

2 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Whenever I see another Duggar's thread is hot, I think, "Who is courting/engaged/pregnant/delivering." When the Dillard thread is hot, I think, "What stupid thing has Derick said/done now?"

Lol, seriously! I have to think that there's a bad Jer/Ben vs Derick dynamic - I can't imagine they all get along all that well. ESPECIALLY when you consider that they all have such irrationally strong convictions & base their reason for existence on a book that can be misinterpreted 17 ways from Sunday, and they all feel ridiculously passionate about their interpretation. It's a literal recipe for disaster.

[Dubiousclaire]

Trying to catch up on dwreck.. I was confused as to what the fundraising was for. I thought it was for the college ministry program, but if it is a church sponsored program, wouldn't the church be funding it?  Or requesting donations through the church's website?  

But is he really asking people to fund him going to ministry school? Couldn't he get a job at the church, doing bookkeeping, or sweeping floors? It appears he is just a volunteer at the church. Since when is that a "ministry"?  Is every Sunday school teacher and church usher eligible for a tax free "ministry"?

What about FAFSA, and student loans? Oh wait, those are only for real, accredited schools. 

[2manyKidzzz]

I don't understand what this pretend schooling will qualify DWreck to do job wise. He can't then work somewhere as an actual minister can he? I fail to understand, TOTALLY!!!!

[Bad Wolf]

2 hours ago, Firebird said:

Was that weenie gravy made with Jill R.'s pink drink, Plexus? That was nasty...I'll take Dr. pimple popper over that any day.

That was my thought, too. Has anyone told Jill that her drink can be used in cooking, and can even be a gravy base?  

[Lurky]

Still find it utterly bizarre that when they have a court case in process that they're expecting to bring in multi-million dollar payouts, they can't put off Derek's course for a year, and be able to pay for it without grifting.

ETA I know, I know, there's no guarantee they'll win the court case, but equally, no guarantee they can crowdfund either.  And God forbid they do what everyone I know does, which is work in a job they may not like, to save up the cash to pay their fees/pay off loans.

[grandmadugger]

NWA has a pretty good size Muslim population. Fayetteville and Bentonville both have Muslim Centers. I can't find any recent numbers but when the bentonville center opened in 2012 they had 150 at Friday prayers and more for festivals. I am sure in the last five years that has grown. 

[Eternalbluepearl]

4 minutes ago, Lurky said:

  And God forbid they do what everyone I know does, which is work in a job they may not like, to save up the cash to pay their fees/pay off loans.

I don't think the Dillards plan on working anywhere, ever. They may "volunteer", they may "minister", and they may get some level of training in a certain field, but they will not ever actually hold jobs. It's not going to happen. Jill has begun her career attempting vbacs for Jesus and Derick has begun his pretending to know about religion, marriage, and fatherhood while the rest of us laugh. 

[cascarones]

4 hours ago, HarryPotterFan said:

Oh wow, that's awful. But also really shows a failure of our school system in teaching about Native American culture. I know my school did the bare minimum. I like the way you think though, using a fruit roll up to get a horse.

 

Yeah, it's a part of US history that gets shifted off to do a project on a tribe! Yay! I took a wonderful anthropology class in college, strangely in Italy, but it was really eye opening to see it from a neutral perspective.

I seriously love kid logic, like you go Izzy, be manipulative, maybe you really wanted your brand spanking new friend to come over and convinced Mom and Dad that he'd never eaten a dinosaur shaped chicken nugget. Maybe Derick decided that you know, they needed to know evolution isn't real and used dinosaur chicken nuggets to reiterate this fact. 

On that note, it is nice to welcome people into their home and I do hope the discussion was open minded and that Derick and Jill took the time to listen before creating responses in their heads. I'm an optimistic gal. 

[Four is Enough]

"Jill's sister" may be a euphemism for "Duggar girl whose name I cant remember, who was enlisted to help Jill with MY kids"...

In other words, a Lost Girl.

[Snarkle Motion]

1 hour ago, Dubiousclaire said:

What about FAFSA, and student loans? Oh wait, those are only for real, accredited schools. 

Don't you know loans and debt are evil and out of the question! Much better to beg without a need to ever repay!

52 minutes ago, grandmadugger said:

NWA has a pretty good size Muslim population. Fayetteville and Bentonville both have Muslim Centers. I can't find any recent numbers but when the bentonville center opened in 2012 they had 150 at Friday prayers and more for festivals. I am sure in the last five years that has grown. 

Yes, especially with a lot of corporatations based in nwa I'm sure more diverse people are moving there for work. I've heard Fayetteville is actually starting to get more urban and progressive (by Arkansas standards).

They probably saw someone with head coverings, or modest clothing, that tipped them off that they were Muslim (maybe also browness) and approached the couple to invite them to dinner. The couple prob thought they were just being nice neighbors, unsuspecting of their true motives.

This whole post by Dwreck feels like justification for his request for donations. Look, we are doing "real" ministry with heathens in our hometown, send us money and stop criticizing us!!!!  

[Fluffy14]

I seriously think part of the issue with Derick's  grifting ways has to do with the way those Duggar kids were raised.  I think Jill must have a huge huge impact on his thinking.

1. Jill wishes she had a birthday once a week so she get a free one every week.

First off, this is incredibly childish thinking.

Jill you are an adult you can walk in and buy yourself one everyday if you want. You don't have to wait for something to be "free" before you can get something.

In a family that size, getting something free was the only way these kids were lavished on obviously. So that mentality of "giving" something "to" or "away" that you you received for free fuelled the free donut escapade to the homeless couple. 

Getting anything for free obviously was the goal in her family growing up and I bet in some really weird backhanded misinterpretation it was viewed as God's provision or blessing.

It also makes sense how easily they can spend other people's money without a care in the world that buying expensive steaks (or airline tickets) while accepting donations would be perceived as a distasteful , rude thing to do. If you have not worked hard for something you don't understand the value put into it. (Another childish behaviour)

What I find very sad is the fact that the child doesn't get a treat that the parents may have had to work a little extra for to lavish or show value to the child , it has to be free.  Here JSLAVE it's your birthday and we love and value you for who you are let's go for a treat, but no let's go somewhere where it is free so we don't have to spend a penny  more on this financial burden we birthed into this family.

it is sad that deep down Jill has a perception that she has to wait a whole year to treat herself to something she obviously enjoys , not that she is worth the 8 bucks or whatever it costs to go in and buy it because she wants it.

These kids perceptions about money is very effed up.