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I accidentally invited the two of the band members of this band to my 21st birthday party:

http://www.thegrams.co.uk/index.htm

It was only afterwards that I realised they're soon going to be famous because of their excellent, excellent music! There I was just thinking those guys were just ordinay, very friendly, very cool fellow co-workers! SCORE! Now I can spend the rest of your life living off the back of their fame, as a SOCIALITE!!!

Anyway yeah. They're also on Myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/thegramsuk 

It bothers me because I CAN'T speak to my brother anymore. He obsesses over this hatred of my mum and of trying to make everyone else hate her.

I've told him he does this and asked him to stop, it doesn't work.

Well, not in Ireland there's not (we have no phone lines, internet access, post-boxes or electricity in most parts of the country, although we're slowly getting there with some EU funding...)

But, I'm currently living in England. So I have the internets here. Although I'm not really sure how to work the google.

.... Irish ¬¬

He drove her everywhere she needed to go. He'd only let her go to work.

Incidentally, sometimes he'd get so angry that he would refuse to drive her into work. She had to take a taxi, and then he would accuse her of paying the taxi driver with sex.

Somehow in his mind, this seemed like a likely scenario.

When she did ask for driving lessons, he wouldn't let her take them because driving instructors were all "perverts"... he insisted on teaching her himself. He'd get frustrated and impatient very quickly, and give up after two or three lessons...


She only learned to drive after she left him. Then when she moved back a year later, the tables had turned - he'd crashed his car and hadn't got a job or any money to afford a new one, whereas she had a car and could drive. He was so frustrated by the situation that he told my mother stories about how people in town had seen her driving and she was a "terrible" driver... apparently everybody in the whole town was commenting on what a bad driver she was. This is probably just a story that my dad made up, to belittle my mum and make her nervous... but it's the kind of thing he does.

So yeah... even more of a reason that I have NO IDEA how my brother could justify his behaviour 100%, and hate my mum. There is some kind of psychological block or something... is he refusing to remember any of this stuff? Does he lie to himself about what happened, why it happened etc?


(Incidentally, we never learned to swim either... because he thought that paedophiles hung out around pools and beaches, and that both were dirty. The ONE TIME we were allowed to swim, he made me and my mother wear long shorts and loose shirts over our swimming costumes, even though there was nobody else in the pool...)

I guess I asked on this forum because there are so many people with so many different experiences... I don't know any psychologist forums, and usually when I do search for forums on specific subjects they're dead anyway...

My brother was around to witness the abuse, yes... and he is the only one still in contact with my dad, Manic Matt...

It's just weird, I've love to know what goes through his head, whether he believes the things he says, why he defends his dad, etc...

Maybe you guys can help, because I need a bit of info but I'm not really sure to get it… maybe you have similar experiences etc…

I'll keep it short…

My dad was very violent, very abusive towards his children and to my mother. He never had a job… my mum was the breadwinner of the household. He had constant mood-swings and would hit my mother for the stupidest of reasons, including if he had a bad dream about her. He always let us down in various ways, got drunk a lot, got us into a lot of debt, cheated on my mum, went out drinking/taking drugs every night… would never let my mum go out or even learn to drive…

I have four sisters and two brothers.

My sisters and one of my brothers, live with my mum. They love her, all is well.

My older brother, who is 23, has some kind of weird grudge against my mother though. And I don't know why. He loves his father and defends him as being a great man, even though he's clearly not. He also copies everything my dad says about my mum… my dad is paranoid and convinced that my mum is sleeping around (she's clearly not) and that she wears “slutty clothes” (again, that's so ridiculous… we can all see what she wears… she wears NORMAL CLOTHES.)

When my older brother heard him say these things, he immediately copied them and accused her of the same thing.

My mother hardly ever drinks as she has so much work to do all the time… once however, I bought her a bottle of wine for her birthday. We shared it together, but my dad got offended that we didn't offer him any. He accused her of being a drunkard, and ever since, my brother has accused her of the same…

I don't understand why he defends my dad, and hates my mother… when it's so clear to ANYBODY ELSE that my dad is pretty worthless and a classic stereotypical wife-beater, and my mum is actually a smart, pleasant woman…

But the worst thing is, he feels the need to try and “convert” me and my siblings. I haven't had a conversation with my brother in five years that hasn't been 80% about him talking about what a “disgrace” my mother is. It's got to the point where none of his sisters or our brother hang out with him any more, because that's all he talks about ever. In five years. How much he hates his mum… mostly for made-up reasons!

If I ever try to ask him to stop, or try not to involve myself in his rants, he ends up grabbing my wrists so I can't walk away, and talking loudly over me until I give up. All so he can tell me that he thinks my mother shouldn't be studying science in university, because it's a slutty subject to study. Or something. I don't know, he makes up the stupidest shit...

So here's the reason I need help… what the hell is going on?! Why can't he let go of his imaginary problems after FIVE YEARS? Why is he so obsessed with talking about her all the time? Why does he defend his dad who really is a worthless person? Why does he make excuses for his dad having beaten our mum up so badly (saying things like "she winds him up, if she was REALLY afraid of him then she wouldn't wind him up all the time would she?")

I'm confused. Is there some kind of mental condition this can be attributed to!?

Most parents.

They were very close to the apartment, they knew their children and probably knew that they'd stay soundly asleep for the entire duration of their meal. They checked on them every half hour.

Most parents will happily leave their children upstairs, sleeping on their own, without checking them the entire night. It would have seemed no different from doing that, really.

It was a family friendly resort and considered very safe for children.

The greatest risk was of one of them falling out of bed or having a bad dream and crying for their mummy... the chances of a man coming along and stealing one of them were extremely low.

To blame the parents is such a horrible and pointless thing to do. Anybody with a child should know that nobody ever really does parenting by the book; we all take some risks, because they never seem particularly risky at the time. Most of us will never experience a child being taken from us, so it's not something you tend to worry about when you're so close to them anyway...

New leads, yay... hopefully these will turn out to be fruitful:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6641899.stm


This story is really saddening me...

Child abductions are awfully sad... and terrifying... the thought of anybody ever taking away one of my little babies just fills me with dread...

What angers me too, is that people feel justified in kidnapping and abusing children... and then murdering them. The very least they could do is let the child go. Why does it always end with murder?

How cruel and selfish these people are... they should be tortured for the rest of their days. Seriously, if that little girl is murdered, then the killer should tortured and ever-so-slowly killed, not before being raped in the ass of course. By dogs.

Anyway... I'm following this story closely. I still have a lot of hope that Madeleine is still alive...

YES! Anym!!!! Thank you!!! !!!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z1rSMDNRBGA

A link for anybody interested

about five or six years ago, I saw a few episodes of an anime series. I can't remember what it was called... all I can remember is that it was about a boy who erm... was forced to go on an adventure, I think? It was a comedy, a parody of RPGs and the like... when he fought enemies, their stats would appear on-screen...

...I remember liking it... it was funny...

Any ideas what this was called?

No no no, you're misunderstanding,

I agree that the women are just as responsible, HOWEVER,

I'm not talking about them. I'm not talking about how stupid they are or aren't. I'm talking about my half brother.

How irresponsible the women are is irrelevant to what I'm actually talking about, because my point is that HE is an irresponsible, nasty, lazy and bad person. I don't care whether or not the mothers are, as they have nothing to do with me. I'm talking about him.

If you went around town, Helm, knocking up women... then they'd be an idiot for letting you, yes. But you'd still be an asshole for doing it. You see what I'm saying? And even more of an asshole for doing that and then not even bothering to pay a bit of child support for any one of them. The mothers in all of the cases attributed to my brother, have at least worked to support their child and give them a decent life. In all the cases, he's disappeared from their lives entirely.

I'm talking about what an asshole my brother is, not what an asshole completely unrelated people to me are...

One thing I know is that I'm hardly anything like my dad, and take after my mom a lot more in terms of personality, behavior, and a predisposition to anxiety.

A lot of that, like the disposition to anxiety, is genetic.  BUT, let's say I had been given to the wrong parents at birth or something... then I would still have the genetic tendency to worrying, but I might've learned different behavior to deal with it.  Though I wasn't switched at birth, (as it is quite obvious we're related,) my ways of dealing with anxiety are quite different than hers.  We've learned different behaviors due to different life events.

She was raised by an verbally and phsyically abusive father, and that certainly impacted her a lot from the earliest years.  I was raised in a very normal home, which was void of verbal or phsyical abuse.  My mom has had to struggle to overcome the way she was raised, and to not be like her parents, but she's managed very well.  And because I wasn't raised like she was, it's probably been easier for me to cope with stress than it was for her.

This is why I believe that just because we may be genetically predisposed to something, doesn't mean we are resigned to it.  We can train ourselves to change our behavior and responses to things, despite our environment.

hehehe, I hope that I'm like your mum...

...I'm also from a family where the father was psychically and verbally abusive. When I was trapped, the way I dealt with it was to hurt myself (not cutting, but strangely I took to making myself sick... I've never heard of this being used as a form of self-harm as it seems to generally be referred to as Bulimia... although in my case it's not weight related so errrrmmm yeah who knows... ¬¬)

I realized at the time that this was a terrible weakness and certainly not helping my situation, and I can't really explain why I did it. Even now, when I'm really angry or really upset about something, I refuse to eat, and if I do then I'll force myself to get sick... a problem that can last for days at times. I guess it is helpful to have something else to focus on that's not whatever is troubling you... it also helps release anger in a way that wasn't how my father did it.

Maybe if I hadn't grown up with my father and seen what a useless person he is, I would have been less careful about trying to be a good person, and would have ended up exactly like him.

Or maybe I'd have ended up the same person but without the anxiety problems and social/relationship difficulties I have now.

What baffles me is... None of my full sisters or brothers have become like my father... the only person who is like him is the only sibling who has never even met him. Which makes me think that, perhaps we all had the potential to be exactly like my father... all the personality traits and everything... but because we experienced what a monster he was, we learned to be completely different... wait, does that make sense??

Some ways in which my father and half brother are the same without ever having met:

They both make up stories about their partners to make them seem worse in the eyes of others...
They both publicly denounce wife-beaters but are, themselves, wife beaters...
They both make up fabulous lies about how women fancy them and everybody thinks they're great...
They both have had numerous children from different mothers, none of which they care for or even think about ever... unless it's because they're threatening to take the children away from the mother if she should break up with them...
They don't have jobs because they both feel like they're above the average person... too good to work a boring day job... yet they manage to spend all the money their wife/girlfriend has...
They both have new ridiculous plans to start a business and a new get-rich-quick plans every month... none of which fall through but all off which drive their partner further into debt...
They both have exactly the same personality... think that everybody finds them charming and smart and sauve... even though few people do...
They both claim they were abused as children, and would never ever afflict abuse on another person because they know what it's like... but they're just as bad as the stories they tell...

I could go on, and on, and on....

The worst part is, they both seem to be able to completely lie to themselves... when I asked my half brother if it was true what he'd done, he said that all he'd done was "push" her... a claim I often heard my father make, even though he knew we'd seen him do a lot more than to push our mother...

He's also convinced that his girlfriend was cheating on him... which, again, I know isn't true... and is something else my father used to believe of my mum... he was absolutely convinced she was cheating on him even though if you knew my mum... you'd know that was a ridiculous thing to think of her...

Man I am just totally ranting. Sorry. I'm just really annoyed... and I think it's such a lame, lame thing to happen... I'm going to be totally fucking afraid of passing my genes on to the next generation...

I know that, Andail... but I mean, it's a contributing factor in their bad behaviour. There are sooo many other contributing factors...

Helm: Sure, the mothers weren't exactly without blame, but the fact is, he's going around town getting women pregnant without any regard for the children  that will be born and raised without a father. Any person who does that deserves a slap in the face... he can't even be bothered to get a job to support them.

The mother in this case is 10 years his junior, younger than me in fact... I can see that it may have been a case of her being stupid and young and falling for the lies and pretend security he offered. I'm not excusing her... I don't even know her that well. But what kind of 30-year-old guy gets a 19-year-old pregnant, then can't even be bothered to get a job to pay for the child (she works full-time, incidentally), won't even move in with her, and then beats her up when she leaves him.

My half-brother, apparently

But yeah... I just don't understand how without even having met my father... he can be so much like him. I mean, down to the tiniest details... what's that about!?

I'm sure SOME of it is genetic... personality disorders such as ADHD contribute to overall bad-behaviour, and I know that my dad has that and so does my half-brother... these disorders are apparently passed on more easily to guys than girls, which is why myself and my sisters are all "fine", but my brothers all struggle with behaviour problems...

But how they got to have the same manipulative streak in them... I have no idea. Even details like... they both have grand ideas on how to become millionaires by starting crazy businesses... they'll obsess over these ideas and then scrap it all and have a NEW idea a few weeks later... I don't understand how even tiny details like that can be the same...

A few months ago I found out I had a half brother, a child of my father's that he never told us about.

I met him a few times, and he looks exactly like my dad and speaks exactly like my dad. Sadly, he also has the same personality as my dad... I found out that he beats his girlfriend up... he lies and spreads rumours about her to try and make other people believe that she's horrible... and he hasn't had a job for years... he has two children with two different women already and he's only 28..  And of course he doesn't pay child support for these children. Somehow, just like my dad, he seems to think it's okay to have children with whomever you want, whenever you want, and then not pay a penny towards their upkeep. nice.

When I found all this out, I immediately broke up contact with him. I want nothing to do with a wife-beater, half-brother or not...

The thing is, it amazes me that he can be basically EXACTLY like my dad... in so many ways, their personality, looks and life are mirror images of each other - and yet he's never actually MET my dad. It's really strange.

Makes me worry about having sons in the future...

Genetics are a funny thing

The IT crowd is SHIT

Worst thing on the internet: Those ads with the smiley faces that yell, "HELLOOOO!???" in the most aggravating, and taunting way they possibly could.

WHY would I want to download your fucking smiley pack now you've gone and pissed me off so much?!?!?

Worst bit is, they're rife on Myspace, and I use myspace for listening to music at work. So I have my fucking volume turned right up and then.... "HELLOOOOO!??"

Internet 12:15 - 19
    Thou shalt not shaggeth thy animal, but thee may watch a lady being shaggeth by a dog or whatever if you torrentz it. lol! lest your face asplode and your penis be riddled with rabbit-looking goats poo.

She choked to death on a plastic bag.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6619983.stm