Someone's had too much Lavoris...

Got family drama? Why not Flickr it out!

We recently stumbled upon a Flickr set called: "The Changeling." At first, it just seemed to be a run-of-the-mill group of scanned photographs documenting an American family in the 1950s and 1960s (ok, yeah: with a strange set title, no doubt). But then, the more we clicked through this set the more we noticed all of its bizarre and, well...agressive image tags. From these tags and from the images' lengthy captions we began to piece together an intense family drama, unfolding before our eyes in all its (publicly-viewable) Flickr glory.

See a bit for yourself. Take a look, for example, at this screenshot of tags from one single image from the set:



Those tags come from this image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/strobis/2454925578/in/set-72157606994681036/

From these tags we can discern that this is a story of heartbreak, of sibling rivalry run amok, and of mouthwash addiction! Yep. See, allegedly, the little girl in this picture had a pretty wild childhood mouthwash habit. An excerpt from one of the captions says this:

_____ looks almost human here. It's hard for people to believe this, but ______ spent much of her childhood drinking Lavoris mouthwash straight from the bottle. My parents didn't have a clue this was happening until the day they saw her drunk and unable to walk a straight line. The bad news: ______ blamed her later alcoholism on our mother for failing to notice that she was addicted to Lavoris as a child. The good news: ____'s breath throughout her early childhood was cinnamony-fresh.

I'm not making this up. _____ would have Lavoris tea parties with me and _____, pouring each of us a small cup. ______ and I understandably found this shit undrinkable, so _____ would just help herself to our share. Not sipping it either -- throwing it down.

Thankfully, we get a sort of response from her about this calumny. See, the other amazing part of this feud is that the brother also cuts and pastes portions of the sister's emails right into the captions of the images on Flickr. So we get some of the other side, albeit filtered. For example, here he quotes her as saying about him:

YOUR DEPRESSION WAS CAUSED BY YOUR WEAKNESS TO USE AND TO CONTINUE TO USE, ILLEGAL DRUGS, MAGIC MUSHROOOMS, COCAINE, ETC. I REMEMBER A FRIEND TELLING ME, THAT SHE KNEW YOU IN COLLEGE AND A QUEENS COLLEGE PROFESSOR GOT YOU TO EAT MORE THAN TOMATO SOUP AND FRUIT COCKTAIL.....

So, let me get this straight. Apparently the script goes like this:

Brother: I hate you. You're crazy! And it's because of all the mouthwash you used to drink as a kid.

Sister: I hate you more. And you're crazier than I am because of all the tainted tomato soup and fruit cocktail you used to eat in college.

Brother: I hate you most. And to prove it I'm going to post all this on the web.


I wonder who would have had a better blog: the Hatfields or the McCoys?

Children of God

As anyone who knows me knows, I have a little fascination with cults. However, I have a personal tie to one particular cult, called "Jesus People", "Children of God" or "the Family". This cult was centered around a creepy character called David Berg and his consort Karen "Maria" Zerby. It began with communal living, branched into free love, "flirty fishing" (proselytizing by prostitution) and then, tragically, sexual abuse of children. The scary thing is that this cult had a few million members in its heyday and still survives now, although they have formally disavowed the sexual abuse (although are still up to some nefarious activities). I had heard of the CoG, but was reminded about their existence by my little sister's ex-boyfriend, Thor, who was born into it, and spent his childhood traveling all over Europe, busking for the group. (note 1: I feel that it is okay to use his real name since his mother has written a book, Heaven's Harlots, about her experiences and openly referenced him, with his permission. Plus, he's very open to discussion about it. note 2: I seem to keep in contact with her exes perhaps better than she does...) He recently sent us a chapter of an account his Dad is pitching for a book deal as a complement/counter to his mom's perspective, but I haven't had a chance to look at it closely. The biggest splash the cult has made was the Ricky Rodriguez murder/suicide in 2005. From his birth to "Maria" and his adopted father David Berg, he was groomed to take over cult leadership and given the name "Davidito". His childhood (and abuse) was chronicled in a grotesque child-rearing guide called "The Story of Davidito". Unsurprisingly but sadly, he was never able to recover and his abusers were never prosecuted. He finally set out on a quest to kill his mother and then himself, but instead killed one of his former nannies/abusers when he was unable to track down Maria. I read a book about his story called Jesus Freaks: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge that tells his story. It's pretty heartbreaking.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, ex-members have created a comprehensive wiki with great photo, document and video archives. The images on top are some of the weird posters from the site. Obv, not for the faint of heart.