Creeva's World 2.0 » brother

Happy Valentines and Happy Birthday Dad

Creeva — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:31:31 +0000

The picture is going with “love is with your family” motif. That’s my father with my brother and myself (I don’t think he is really asleep). Happy birthday dad. Happy Valentine’s day to everyone else.

I’ve Written A Bit About My Brother Lately

Creeva — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 12:14:46 +0000

I know I’ve been writing about my brother over the last week or so on and off. It wasn’t for any particular reason. Maybe it was because of his birthday this week. I can’t really say it was venting since I wasn’t really complaining about him. It was just one of those things, you think of one story and another pops up. If after writing this post another one pops into my head, I’ll set it up to publish in a couple months.

I just don’t think I can put too much time into one family member, especially when I have so many family members I can pick on. At least this last week will give my brother a few articles to read the few times he actually visits my blog and searches the term “brother”. The first few times he did that there were no results.

I Told My Brother How He Was Going To Die

Creeva — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 11:56:30 +0000

I was the oldest child in my family. I can also say I was a bastard older brother, mostly I think it was because I always wanted to be a single child. So far barring any other additions (extremely unlikely) I’m the oldest of eight. So my dreams of being a single child didn’t really play out as expected. My sisters, well I was always protective of them. My brother on the other hand…. Well we’ll leave it with the fact that we have never gotten along for any length of time.

While there are a few good stories I have about my brother, I’m going to start with one of the ones I was most proud of. It was how I killed my brother. Granted he is still alive and well and in November had his second child. So I didn’t really kill him, but he thought I did.

One day my brother was being extremely annoying, but he was always up for dare (once in high school we managed to convince him to run down the street naked when there was six inches of snow on the ground). Well that day I had a plan. Now I’m sure almost everyone reading this has learned the method to check and see if a nine volt battery is still good. Well in all honesty there are a few methods.

Method 1. – Plug it into something and see if it turns on.

Method 2. – Using a battery tester

Method 3. – Putting a penny across the two terminals and see if it warms up (great for melting crayons).

Method 4. – The old tried and true method of licking the battery terminals and see if you get a shock.

One day I decided to teach my brother method four. I would say I was nine or ten years old, so he would have been four-five years old. At first I explained the procedure, he (smartly) did not believe me. So he wanted me to do it first. I licked the battery, and was assured it was live. I also showed no emotion to the shock of licking the battery (this was key). I then proceeded to hand over the battery to him. He was still sceptical but he proceeded to lick the battery.

His head shot back from the surprise shock ( I think it was a new battery). He was upset at this time. At first he was going to tell on me. I then proceeded to tell him that licking the battery was going to cause him to die within a day. There was no cure and there was nothing he could do about it. He didn’t believe and pointed out that I licked the battery first. I told him that I didn’t lick it at all, that I just acted like I did. So I wasn’t going to die at all.

This had him livid and crying, but as he was about to run downstairs and tell my parents, I asked him what they would think if he told my parents that he did something so stupid. He was upset and stayed up in the room for a little while discussing what to do. Eventually he went down and told my parents. I of course got yelled at for that one. I can say that it was worth it though.

I’m going to die?

Happy Birthday To My Brother

Creeva — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:51:09 +0000

My next in-line brother turns twenty-seven today. A very happy birthday to him.

The First Time My Brother Drove A Car

Creeva — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 13:58:05 +0000

Image from here

I’m going to go out on a limb and call out ages here, I could be wrong. The first time my brother operated a vehicle he was four years old, which would make me around nine at the time. The location – my grandparent’s house. My grandparent’s driveway used to be on a hill. I always enjoyed just speeding a bike down that hill – if I had to guess it was probably about five cars deep. So it was about fifty feet long with about twenty of that being mostly flat.

We were getting ready to leave my grandparent’s house and my mother sent my brother and myself out to the car. Now since this was along time ago (in a galaxy far far away?) some details on which family car this was has been lost in the ages. I remember one car and different parents remember others. I’m fairly sure at the age my brother was he doesn’t remember which car it was at all. What I can tell you is that it was a stick shift.

I was sitting in the back seat of the car and my brother was climbing around the front of the car. I was reading a book or comic book in the back seat of the car and I noticed my mother coming out of my grandparent’s garage and walking towards the car. At some point in this my brother had removed the parking break and managed to get the car into neutral. The car started rolling down the hill. My mother saw this and started running towards the car. She made it to the driver’s side car door, but she couldn’t open it. Somehow my brother had managed to lock the car door. I was in the back seat frozen in fear (shock?) at what was going on. My mother was yelling at me to jump in the front seat and stop the car or unlock the door. I just couldn’t move.

Down and down the hill we went, I know that it took less then a minute or so , but at the time looking back it felt a lot longer. We passed the end of the driveway and were moving into the street. We crossed the street and ended up in the yard of the house across the street (luckily my grandmother lived in a cul-de-sac and there was no cross traffic). In the yard across the street my brother managed to scratch the side of the car across a telephone pole, just missing hitting it by inches.

Since he didn’t hit the pole I guess you could say his first experience was a success. That isn’t what it felt like for me sitting in the back seat.

Just Because Something Is Online Doesn’t Mean It’s Public Domain

Creeva — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:03:08 +0000

The above picture has nothing to do with this article.

A few weeks ago I was having a discussion with one of my family members about web site design and blogging. He stated that he was going to be starting some sort of manga/anime fan site based on a certain character. I stated that he should be a bit wary about the images he used that he may have to worry about copyright issues since the images were trademarked and copyrighted. Keep in mind this was the same brother that wanted to setup a website for a girl so you couldn’t download the images (and I called him out on the futile nature of that). Kind of ironic when he wants to control it, he thinks one way – but when he wants to use it he thinks another.

Another family member piped in that they thought if it was online it was public domain and free to use. Now I corrected them, but so everyone else knows – just because something is published online doesn’t mean it’s free to use. When I don’t use my own pictures I always use creative common licensed images and put an attribution link beneath the image (sometimes I do use public domain images and don’t attribute). I even had an online scuffle with someone who licensed her work via creative commons and didn’t know what it meant.

I gave my family the two minute off the top of the head review of current copyright law and how creator’s rights worked under our borked legal system. Essentially if you are in the US anything made 1923 or earlier is free game – anything after that is the life of the creator plus seventy years. Unless the page it’s on states otherwise you have to assume the work is copywritten. Then we get into fair use, which is a whole other ball of wax entirely that I’m not going to touch right now.

My First Job

Creeva — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:04:18 +0000

You would think from the image I chose for the header that I was doing something cool with the Nintendo Entertainment System. This unfortunately is not the case. Where the Nintendo came into play was that it was the object of my desire. I desperately wanted an NES. This was sometime around seventh or eighth grade so the years would have 1988 -1989 and the Nintendo was in full swing, you can see one of the commercials below.

Now my father didn’t believe in video games. About five years earlier he got us a Commodore Vic-20, this is all fine and dandy – my parents fell for the whole “give you kid a computer and he’ll be computer literate for life” crap that they were handing out in the eighties. A computer was meant for learning and yes there were a few games we had for it, but it was meant to learn something on. I learned I never wanted to be a programmer, that’s what I learned. I could go to my neighbors and play the Atari 2600 or play Ultima on his Mac Classic – but me – I was going to have the Vic-20 and like it because I wasn’t getting anything else.

Picture from here

We moved to Vermilion the summer before my seventh grade year. I’m sure I started begging for a NES around that time if not earlier. I’m sure the logic explained to me was that if I wanted a Nintendo I was going to have to earn it. This meant getting a job. I don’t know about your area but for Vermilion, OH there wasn’t much call in the work force for 12-13 year old kids. The one thing that did open up was the ability to get a paper route. The area where we lived in Elyria was a bit too rough for a 11-12 year old to deliver papers, but Vermilion was a quiet small town where such things almost seem nostalgic.

Picture from here (not me)

Another boy was giving up his paper route that was a year younger then me (should have been a sign) and did a week long transition with me so that I could learn the route. By the end of the week I learned the route, I had my little punch card slip ring for billing, I had a carrier bag, and I also had baskets on the back of my bicycle to carry newspapers in. I would try to say it was pimp, but I can’t even type that with a straight face. I rode my bike to school and I got mocked by how stupid it looked. Of course being a geek on the nth degree anyways there is always other things to get picked on then a bike, so I struggled through it. I was a newspaper boy for the Lorain Morning Journal.

You may say that I learned character and fiscal responsibility because of that job. You would also be wrong. I hated that job with a passion. I struggled for the first couple months to get through it. The NES was the apple of my eye and I was going to save the 99.99 (plus tax) for the Action System which included Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (and the pimp NES Zapper). I was impatient to get it, so impatient that I gave my mother the money to get it while I was at school. You would think this being the first large purchase of my life I would have wanted to go and hand over the money and buy the system myself, nope I just wanted the damn thing home.

I get home, my mother isn’t there. I go do my paper route and get back home, my mother isn’t there. I sit in the grass on the front yard and wait. Eventually my mother pulls up in that blue dodge caravan (minivan) we had. She had done other shopping and had a ton of bags. Which one was my Nintendo?????

My mother stopped me and said she talked to the sales person who told her the Sega Master System was the better system to buy since it was faster and supported more colors. WTF? I had worked my butt off in a job hated to have my mother go out and buy me a Sega Master Sytem. No one owned a Sega Master System, only people with no friends owned a Sega Master System. I was not going to own a Sega Master System. I told her with certainty that she had no right to spend the money I earned to buy a Sega Master System. We were going to get back in the car right then, go to the store and exchange it for a Nintendo Entertainment System.

My mother then started laughing. Out of the back of the van she pulled out a Nintendo Action Set. You do not mess with a pre-teen in that way – ever. She said she was going to go upstairs and use the restroom, after which she would come down and help me hook it up to the TV. I think by the time she flushed the toilet I was already on World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros. I had hooked up the Vic-20 so many times that I knew how to do it in my sleep. The NES was more of the same.

At this point I did not want to do the paper route any more, but my grandfather thought it was good for me so I kept plodding along. I delivered papers a 3 AM Christmas morning wasn’t that quite the thrill, not. I would definitely preferred to have been sleeping. More and more of my customers were moving to prepaid accounts, which cut into my money. You would think it wouldn’t have effected my bottom line, but I lost out on tip money from these customers – and to this day I believe the Journal used some creative account billing to the paper boys. My grandfather thought I was just doing it wrong, but I was let off the hook after about a year.

Me and my grandparents a year or so after the paper route.

My brother took over the paper route with the help of my grandfather and my mother in delivering the newspapers. Now I don’t know about you but if someone would have driven me on the route every day, I may have been more likely to actually like the job. He is five and half years younger then me, so they were not going to let him go off alone to do it. The funniest thing was after about a year they started loosing money also and it became not financially viable for them either. I guess it wasn’t just me.

You would think that this would end my families relationship with the Journal after so many bad experiences, it didn’t. For the last few years my sister (now 22) has a motor route in Vermilion delivering papers. I guess she makes really good money at it. It would seem the third time is a charm. I don’t think my brother or my sister ever hated it as much as I did. I did get my NES though.

Below is a link to Google Maps that shows the actual route location of my paper route.

View Larger Map

Looking Back At A Month of Mom

Creeva — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:49:05 +0000

I never truly finished my “Month With Mom Series“, I was working on the novel for NANOWRIMO, and then came back and ran out of steam to finish the blog article series. It’s take me over a month, but I wanted to address a couple comments. The first came from my youngest sister who still lives with my mother and step-father:

Ok well im just going to say what I feel . About the part 2 and part 3 , I feel she should of never ever took him back . He is not a father and doesnt act like one. He does not bother talking to us all the time except for my yonger brother usually. And is mean to the pets . I dont even like him living in the house . And seems like he doenst even try at all . But I still dont get what she see’s in him. When he was in Columbus it was better without him . But thats all im gonna say .

She seems to have some of the same feeling that I do on the issue, at least when it comes to how my mother dealt with my step-father during their separation and the reconciliation. So this is similar feelings coming form someone that is thirty-two and someone that lives in that household and is thirteen. This is also her father, it might be my step-father, but it is her father and this is the treatment she feels that she gets. Don’t forget that I had another sister pipe in on her feelings. My own father has read my series, but thought it would be best to not leave public comments, I guess in some ways he is a wise man.

This next comment was left by Groovymarlin who runs her own blog, but I knew through playing SWG with. This comment was left on part 20 of the series (also the final part I finished).

I’ve been reading these all along and I have to say they’re fascinating, though maybe not for the reasons that you think. I’ll just summarize my thoughts so far:

1. Your mom is obviously a very shallow person. It also sounds like she was a little too selfish and self-centered to be a very good mom.

2. On the other hand, you were all fed, clothed, received medical care, etc., etc, growing up yes? My point being – she may not be a very good mom, but there are much WORSE moms.

3. A lot of your complaints about her sound pretty nit-picky to a third party. I’m sure that to you, just about everything she does is annoying and obnoxious and irritating. But to an outsider, a lot of the things she does sound like…things that middle-aged women do. However…

4. Your opinion and view of her has obviously been colored by the truly negative things she HAS done in the past, and therefore every one of her transgressions is magnified to you.

5. Your mom seems to have a bad habit of using people, but remember: people allow themselves to be used. Your grandparents in particular seem to have no problem allowing her to manipulate them. Is it right? No. Are they adults, and capable of deciding for themselves whether to allow this? Yes (at least as far as we know – if at some point due to age or health they become unable to make these decisions on their own, then there would be a real problem).

I think in general you’re handling the mom situation the right way, which is to just let her do her own thing, as long as it’s not hurting you or your own family. I feel pretty bad about some of the things she said about, to, and in front of your sister. That passive-aggressive shit is not cool, not from anyone, and especially not from a mother. But what can you do about that, other than give your sister your emotional support and help her do her own thing as well? Nothing.

People suck, don’t they?

Ever since I read this comment I thought it would be a good blog post on it’s own for a reply instead of loosing it in the noise of comments that no one would ever read, just like my sister’s comment above. Though she says I’m handling this the right way and can see where I am coming from I wanted to address a couple of the points.

Point number two stated because we were clothed, fed, and had medical care that she couldn’t have been a terrible mom, there are crack addict mothers that can do the same. When I was 16 I had a job where I pulled a muscle in my chest. It kept going for a few days where I didn’t tell anyone that I was having trouble breathing. Everytime I took a deep breath it physically hurt ot breath. Not to the point where I couldn’t breath, but to the point where I thought something was wrong with my heart since it was in that vincinity. Like eveyr male I ignored it as long as possible and finally mentioned to my mother.

My mother thought I was making it up and yelled at me for making her take me to the doctor. Stating she didn’t have the money for it (my parents were divorced by then). I think my grandparents ending up paying for it. It turned out I didn’t have heart problems like i was afraid, but a pulled chest muscle like I said. I had been hyper-ventilating for days, which means taking breaths faster and more shallow then you normally would. I hadn;t noticed since it seems we are taught when you are hyperventilating you are gasping for air. I was proscribed codeine for the pain, every once in awhile to this day the problem will creep back for a week or two and I just deal with it since pain medication is the only thing they can proscribe. My siblings have had similar doctor experiences where my mother only reluctantly took them after we plead the case to my grandparents since my mom thought it was some sort of attention plea.

I never asked for medical attention from my mother. Besides getting teeth pulled for braces the last major medical thing tha tI had done was in elementary school when I got chronic ear aches. So this wasn’t a case of my mother always dragging me ot the doctor and me haivng nothing wrong with me, it was serious to me, I was in tears fearing the worst about my condition and thinking it was my heart.

A similar issue goes with the getting fed thing, my mother has always chosen not work. Because of this she happily took advantage of the free lunch program for the local schools. I can’t say that my sibling are still on it, yet for two years of my high school I was. It seemed to her better to get her kids free lunches then to get a job. She has worked the welfare system so she could go on buying things from the home shopping network and Longaberger baskets, but send her children into the free lunch program. that is selfish and naive, and if she had been cutting back on other things maybe I would have more sympathy and understanding.

So did she keep clothed, fed, and medical care – only when it suited her, she didn’t have pay, it didn’t effect other people’s appearance of her, or she was forced. I still wonder what school officials thought about me wearing hundred dollar tennis shoes (since she wanted us to look our best) while getting free lunchs.

Number three stated I was pointing out alot of nit picky things – I mentioned earlier that alot fo these were small things, things that eventually broke me and caused me to cut off all communication with her. I don’t deny some of hte things were small, but it is also the small things that shape us. The big things we overcome; my mother didn’t beat me, she was the person that cared about herself first and her children second.

Number four stated that I magnify the issues and focus them on myself. I was the whipping boy, after me it the third in line, then the fourth (my brother second in line didn’t get the whipping boy treatment), now it’s my sister that’s fifth in line. I can say what I felt was slights to me and things that I have a right to complain about. If one day my siblings decide to tell their own stories alot of similarities will line up, since this is what they tell me “off the record”. Eventually maybe I’ll get some of them to talk about their own experiences more.

I’m also however not going to deny that I’m writing about the things she did that annoyed me or set me off. These feelings will seem stronger to me then outside forces. Some of it is truly petty, but I needed material to write and I did leave some bigger things off the record for the moment, writing this piece reminded me of the doctor’s issue I mentioned. I’m not saying I’m done with this series, but for the moment I’m done writing about it. I may do some more pieces in the future, but it will be about the larger things she did when I have the time, energy, and motivation to write about them.

If your interested here are the links to the stories so far:

A Month With Mom – Part 19 – My Sisters View

Creeva — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:29:45 +0000

A while back I received the following email from my sister (It’s been mildly edited to protect names and some grammar):

So I just read your blog..

I must add something.. and you make me realize mom doesn’t ever say anything nice about me.. and I’m not writing this to bitch about her either but its true. I went out to eat with her, our sisters, and our youngest brother the other day and she told our youngest she couldn’t get any peircings because “no preppy girls have them” and how they look like trash.
okay, well she was refering to me

Second.

I told summer she should really think about going to EHOVE (the local vocational school – creeva). Mom goes EHOVE is for people that don’t do good in school and our youngest sister doesn’t want to be apart of that (the sister writing this went to EHOVE – creeva). Okay.. diss to me again, which i said something.

Third.. mom asks me if i went to Trip Ohio in 8th grade cus our youngest sister will be going next year. I say, no because she didn’t have the money for me to go so I couldn’t. I told our youngest sister that at the dinner table and mom denied all of that and said i was lieing. Right.. my older sister said the same thing thats why we both didn’t go.

THEN..

mom tells me to shut up, then our youngest brother makes a comment to our youngest sister..

“You know why mom is mad at you? Because you act like [sister writing this email] that’s why she hates you..”

So i wonder what she tells our youngest brother, she hates me?

Nice.

I stormed out of there and left.

Obviously I have replaced my sibling’s names with their rank and order. We don’t refer to our youngest sister as our youngest sister (who by the way is two years older then my younger brother). I just don’t want to be the reason their name shows up in a google search. I did think it was important to show that my views on my mother are not mine alone. I did receive permission from my sister to use this email, so there is no surprises.

A Month With Mom – Part 16 – Dealing With The Ex

Creeva — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:29:02 +0000

Sorry – this one is a couple days late.

My parents don’t get along. I mean really don’t get along at all. I’m not sure I can stress this enough. My father always seemed to be doing what he did in the best interest of the children. My mother on the other hand was in a money grab and used leverage. This was nothing out of the norm from before the divorce however.

From about age seven until age fifteen, I was keenly aware that my parents did not have a good marriage. I remember telling my friends that my parents were going through a divorce. Ironically, they managed to keep going and going (along the way they also had two more kids). My parents were a mismatch from the beginning, and if I had not entered the picture they might not have gotten together. They did and now for some historical information.

My father attempted to be the disciplinary or the family, my mother was the enabler. She was very very much the enabler. If my father tried to set something down (this is looking back mind you), my mother would take a position just to be the opposite of him. Of course if my mother wanted to agree with him, I could just bring out that everyone was doing something, this would normally allow me to gain her consent.

Now some of this I remember and some of this is stories passed down, I’m going to try to remove the bias and just give you some examples:

When we were living in Elyria, we didn’t make a ton of money. Sometimes we were scraping by month to month. It something that happens to a lot of families, and even as an adult I still find myself doing that most the time. One month we had twenty dollars left in the bank account. My father was counting on this money to provide lunch meat for himself for work. My mother on the other side had other plans. Knowing full well how much money was in the bank she went out and bought wash clothes, effectively draining the bank account.

My mother was never happy with what she had. My father was constantly remodeling to her tastes. He learned a lot of things about working on a house, so I guess you could say that’s a good thing. I however remember the house always being in the state of flux as some project or another was constantly being performed. Of course now as an adult I leverage my father for knowledge he gained from that experience, but my wife can’t live in that sort of atmosphere. So that tidbit is something to take for taste.

During the early nineties my mother decided she wanted her own money. That’s a good thing. She decided she was going ot make dolls and enlisted my father and my grandmother on her venture. She made enough to purchase a living room set after hours and hours of labor and sewing on all three of them. I remember I did quite a bit of stuffing myself, but I don’t believe I did much else. Now you would think that this is a good example of the family working together. However, my mother didn’t seem to understand the concept of “cost of manufacturing”. She believed that the whole thing was pure profit and just poo poo’ed all the money that it cost to create the dolls before sales. Thinking back I hope my father set the profit margin, since my mom would have probably sold them for a loss and then went “Golly, look at all the money I have from sales”.

Before moving on to the post divorce era I’m going to relate one last story. There was a movie I wanted to see (I was 15) – it was “People Under the Stairs” and I wanted ot go with a friend. My father said no, it was an R rated movie and he didn’t want me to go. My mother snuck money to me and dropped me off to see the movie. She was in full enabler mode. Later when my father found out the fight between them was explosive, don’t mix two volatile chemicals together. I have my own father issues I may write about another time, but this month is about mom.

After the divorce my father and I didn’t talk for a few years. We talked lightly after awhile, but it didn’t start getting regular until I was traveling for consulting. This led to a whole new ball game in dealing with them. I didn’t want to accidently pass information from one side to another, but at the same time I had to make my feelings known. I would get my fahter to talk about things my mother had told me – indirectly inquiring. I also did the same thing on the reverse.

The problem is I normally sided with my father’s point of view. I was this go between, trying to maintain peace on each side of the family. When I first moved into my house i was in the middle of everyone, so my house was going to be the holiday get together place. A Switzerland where neither side could fight. Well that didn’t last long before i stopped talking ot my mother.

The most interesting thing was the Thanksgiving when we first moved back to Ohio. On my father’s side all of his siblings still get together the weekend after Thanksgiving to have a family meal. My brother lives next door to my father. My mother was staying at my Brother’s house that day……

Somehow, in some wierd mix up of the galaxy, my mother invited herself over to my father’s house. (I’ve mentioned that they do not get along at all). Her excuse was to see all of my aunt’s and uncles who could care less about her. The rest of the family completely agrees that she was there only to see the house and see how my father was doing. I don’t know how she managed ot get the nerve, but I wouldn’t enter the den of a place where I know I’m not wanted.

But maybe she just wanted to see if my father’s curtains made her look fat……..

A Month With Mom – Part 13 – Talking Behind The Back

Creeva — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:26:51 +0000

For some reason it’s a considered a cardinal sin in society to talk about people behind their backs. In my family however it’s an Olympic event. I’m not sure my mother would get the gold, but I’m sure she would at least get the silver.

When you live in a split family you get used to what you can tell one side or tell the other. The hard part however is not admitting you talked to the other side at all. Once my mother finds out she grilled me on what my father had to say, though I never really passed the information along that he gave me. In the reverse I never passed it along the other way either. I was not the hub of their game of telephone, nor was I going to start to be.

The whole issue that led up to us not speaking she still blames on my father. She thinks my father sent me on some fools errand that was not accurate. Ironically what my father told me was accurate by my mother’s own admittal. My father however didn’t prompt me to take action, what I wanted ot do to help my sister was for myself alone. It was me being a big brother.

The irony of this it seems what I hear through the family grapevine that my father seems to get more blame for me not talking to my mother then I do. Who would have thought. I obviously must be a puppet that can be controlled, that has no independent thought or feelings. I know some people are like that, not me though.

The whole problem is that it’s not just my mother. Like I said talking behind the back is an Olympic sport in these parts. Whenever I try to lay out what everyone is saying to everyone else, I’m the bad guy. I’m the bad guy because I lay it out on the line.

Well I guess this is why I’m blogging about it, I’m laying it out on the line.

A Month With Mom – Part 9 – Favoritism

Creeva — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:24:51 +0000

I don’t have my child yet, let alone more then one. I do however suspect parents have a favorite child. If not a direct favorite, at least a favorite to do certain things with. My parents were no different. I could pull out favoritism on my father’s side, but that doesn’t matter, when that was evident and apparent I didn’t like him very much. My mother on the other hand is what this piece is really about anyways.

My mother’s favorite child was either the trophy child or the youngest child. Sometimes they were the same child, other times they weren’t. I’m not going to say I was never the favorite child, I was quite a bit. i was the oldest child of her six, so being the first I’m sure she always had a bit of pride in me (of course now that this web series has ran….). But like most families the youngest child, the baby of the family, was always doted upon quite a bit. As far as i can remember I never minded, so that never bothered me.

The trophy child on the other hand was my brother immediately behind me. He was as spoiled as my youngest brother. He seems to have turned out just find, though a strong sibling rivalry is still there. Now I’m sure the question s why is he the trophy child. Well at one point he decided that he wanted to live with my father. This was all well and good and lasted a few months (year?). Until he started getting disciplined.

On a weekend visit to my mother, my brother just didn’t go back to my fathers. My father didn’t fight custody over the matter, if my brother wanted to live with my mother, so be it. The key is that my brother had hardly any rules placed upon him. He was the biggest wild child of all of us. That doesn’t make him a bad person, he seems to have turned out alright. I don’t care that I had more rules placed upon me, I’m the oldest, it’s my job to take the brunt of everything. I’m perfectly fine with that. Maybe that’s why I’m so accepting of life now.

My brother got away with this because back in my mother’s brain, if she didn’t indulge him, then she would loose him again to my father. My father and brother were very close when he was younger, this was my mother’s way to split a wedge in there. It took years for my brother to talk to my father again, a lot of this is because of the poisoning that my mother had done. He was her trophy over my father and she wasn’t going to let go of that. I’m sure he doesn’t look at it that way, or is even aware of it.

My sisters on the other hand got both the poisoning against my father (it didn’t take) and none of the perks. Even a decade after my brother had left the house, my sister (from the same father) had a much harder time and more rules placed on her then any of hte rest of us had. She was actively disciplined, yelled at, and talked down to. I’m sure my youngest brother won’t ever go through and be treated that way. He’ll be coddled and spoiled, and probably living with my mother until he’s thirty, or at least until he wises up.

In the end it works out though, my brother can do no wrong in my mothers eyes (heck she even drank with him underage). She has the same blinders towards him that her parents have towards her. He gives her love, he doesn’t question her, he doesn’t push her to be a better person. Since they view the world in similar ways and there is no tension between them, he has become her perfect child. During my mother’s latest separation my brother even told my father that she didn’t have to worry because we’d take care of her. I’m not sure where this “we” comes from. Never was I going to financially support my mother, even when we were getting along.

A Month With Mom – Part 7 – Respect Is A Two Way Street

Creeva — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:22:40 +0000

My grandfather taught me a thing or two about respect. I’m not going to say we see eye to eye, but I did manage to learn a few things. The largest being that you earn respect. My father taught me that you have to deal with the consequences of your actions. My mother never learned either of those two lessons. Somehow because she had the biological capability of having children that it meant that her children would have to respect her. I however never had such a notion. I also have never claimed that my mother was the sharpest tack in the pile.

My mother complained a lot to me that my seventeen year old sister called her a bitch all the time. I stated that this was normal for seventeen year olds. I also felt that my sister was working 20-30 hours a week, going to school, and planning for her future was better grounded then my mother who worked maybe 4 hours a week. My mother would call my sister a bitch, and wonder why she got the word thrown back at her. I’ve brought this up to her and she denies it. I have witnessed it though. Xie has witnessed it. My sisters can attest to it. However my mother turned my grandparents against my sister over this. They thought was sister was the wild child that no one can control (do we need to go back to school and work compared to my mother?). They thought my mother didn’t deserve that language tossed at her. They also have a strong refusal to believe that my mother would ever call any of her children such language.

HA.

My mother was using that language directed at my sisters before they were even teenagers. My grandparents still think that I (in my thirties mind you) is still just telling stories and making things up about my mother. I don’t know how my grandfather who taught me you have to earn respect ever gained it for my mother. The only thing that comes to mind is the fact that she is a woman. Xie sometimes gets annoyed when my grandfather states that if I die, that I need to make sure that I provide for her. My grandfather is a bit sexist and thinks that women have a hard time to provide for themselves. I don’t completely fault the man, he comes from a different generation and my grandparents fit into very traditional gender roles that younger generations don’t follow any more.

Their daughter has not earned the respect of any of her children. Instead of inspiring her children to do more and be an example, she tries to elicit pity from them. This isn’t anger, my mom generally gets pity to pity her so she can get things. This is her control mechanism. This is why my brother states he will take care of her and my grandparents still do. I want help from people because I need help, not because they pity me. To be pitied is all around just sad, to be truly undeserving of pity because you got yourself into the mess; doubly so.

A Month With Mom – Part 6 – Shop-a-holic

Creeva — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:22:12 +0000

During this time where really my mother was in complete financial distress and squeaking by. However she couldn’t stop buying frivolous things at all. She was glued to the home shopping channel, when she didn’t have the money to buy something out right she would jump on their payment plan. When she was really excited about something she would call my grandmother.

I swear something was being shipped to the house every other day from the home shopping network. If I had to venture a guess during the months between I moved back and when I cut off communication she had to spend the equivalent of a couple mortgage payments. It got to the point that she attempted to hide this purchases from me since she knew that she was going to get a lecture from me.

She continued about how she needed her house modernized so it looked good “for the children”. This was her priority in her life. No job, no income, three children living under her roof, and she’s complaining about the flooring (which was adequate and better then some other people’s flooring).

There was an extreme lack of food in the house. There was tons of dry cereal and maybe if you were lucky bread and peanut butter. She ordered out more then cooked anything meaningful, she would also go grocery shopping every day so she could get out of the house. Ironically she didn’t buy much of anything.

My seventeen year old sister who was working had to buy her own food for lunch’s and mostly dinners also since “supper” conflicted with her work schedule. Now for some people this would seem like a fine thing to do, but my mother was getting hundreds of dollars a month in child support for my sister. Yet my sister never seemed to benefit from it. Instead I would have hear about my seventeen year old sister using my mother’s make-up or wearing my 12 year old sisters shirts (yes my sister was almost that small, but also liked tight fitting clothes). Never once did I hear her say anything good about my sister, it was more complaints on how much she cost or the attitude she gave.

To my chagrin my grandparents paid to have new flooring done for Christmas. Sometimes I think my mother is as spoiled as my youngest brother.

Month Of Mom – Part 4 – Still In Ohio

Creeva — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:37:08 +0000

Yesterday I gave you the setup of what was going on when I first got back, let’s keep filling you in. Even though I didn’t live in the house I was becoming the man of the house (again), what I didn’t fulfill chore wise, my sister’s boyfrined filled in on. Neither of us were happy about it some of the inane chores she had us doing.

One of these was Christmas decorations. She always thought all of her children loved decorating for Christmas. I stopped enjoying it around ten years old. I had to crawl through the attic and dig out all of the decorations. I had to deal with, well that needs to come done, but not that. Those are the old decorations. Why didn’t she throw them out or sell them I still can not fathom. The “attic” was the crawl space above the garage that you had to use a ladder to get up there.

My eleven year old sister wanted to climb up and help. My mother said it was too dangerous and wouldn’t allow it. My nine year old brother then threw a temper tantrum that he wanted to come up and was really throwing a fit. My mother was going ot allow him to come up. My sister still couldn’t come up because it was too dangerous for her still. I wasn’t going to allow it. I didn’t allow my brother to come up either. If it was too dangerous for his older sister, it was too dangerous for him. My mother pleaded with me to allow him to come up. I said no, if she couldn’t be consistent with her decision, I wasn’t going to support her inconsistencies.

My youngest brother was still throwing a fit but I shrugged it off. My little brother (was not sure about now) the dictionary definition of a spoiled child. He would run wild and do whatever he wanted. My mother would support it and give him whatever he asked for, allowing him to do things that were “too dangerous” for his older sister, and the boy would not take no for an answer.

One time when I was babysitting the boy I sent him to his room for punishment. He wouldn’t stay in the room so I applied a trick I learned when my next in line brother had that room. If you looped a strap around the door handle to the bathroom door handle immediately across the hall you couldn’t get out. This I admit was exasperation mode for me, since I didn’t want to spank a kid that was twenty-one years younger then me. The kid didn’t want to stay in that room and thought no one could force him (since my mother never disciplined him. While I was sitting on the stairs working (right outside the door) he wsa taking apart his window and trying to climb out of the second floor since he felt no one had the right to punish him.

Before you think this is my babysitting norm or I was endangering the child. His only stipulation was that he had to go stay in his room for 15 minutes straight. That obviously was too much for him, so that’s why it came down to locking him in for fifteen minutes.

My mother never wanted to be a mother. She wanted to give the love (in her own wway) but she would always let the youngest child run wild and do whatever they wanted. It just snowballed down to the extreme with my youngest brother. She was in love with being a mother, the same way a little girl is in love with a having a doll. She wanted children around to dress and show off, yet didn’t want to discipline, didn’t want to teach anything of value, and didn’t want to deal with anything bothersome.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

A Month of Mom – Part 2 – The End is the Beginning

Creeva — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:03:48 +0000

Rather building up to the explosive end, I figured it better to start at the end and show how it built up to that. Hopefully this will allow me to end this journey with something nice to say. Since we’re not finished yet I guess I won’t know. My family is screwed up, tht’s not a lie. I don’t think however it’s any more unique or screwed then anyone else’s. So I guess as I go through this journey I will classify us as normal. Some scenes may seem absurd. Some will seem strange. I however grew up with a better life with then some people I know so she would be responsible for that. However i can’t go home again. She told me so, I have no home except my own.

Tomorrow I’ll give more background leading up to the last day I talked to my mother face to face, however we’re looking at that day first. Time to go back 2.5 years ago. I arrived over to my mother’s house to help my sister out. My sister had special juice my father had purchased for her (i don’t remember why), and it was being drank by my other siblings (not my fathers children). My youngest brother, was actively allowed to enter her room at all time and she wasn’t allowed to lock her doors. My mother was actively looking to drive her out, though she was waiting until she graduated.

I came over to come to my sisters rescue. The first thing my mother does is deny any of this happening. Then she comes and admits it, but comes up with excuses on how the different things happen. At this point trying to maintain the peace all around I offered to bring in a mini fridge for my sister and buy a lock for her door since my mother can’t maintain boundaries for my youngest sister from both my biological parents. Since my sister was the last one of the four of us in the house, she got it hte worst. All the problems that the rest of us went through kept compounding on her (why my sister talks to her now I can’t fathom).

The first excuse is that my mother won’t have a locking door in her house because my sister doesn’t need privacy that no one would invade her space. Secondly she said she wasn’t going to pay the electric bill a mini fridge would cost, my step father at this point came down the stairs and started to chime in. I told him to shut the hell up (ok I used stronger language), the man who had abandoned my mother for over a year had no say in this dicussion in my book, he had been back less then month.

I had heard my mom cry about how much she hated him. The main reason they got back together? The noble thing would be to say it was love, maybe it will be again for them. However my mother’s excuse to me over the previous month of deciding if she was going ot take him back was two-fold the first is that she didn’t want to die alone – fair enough. The second was the part that disgusted me, she didn’t feel she had to work. She complained that this was her time to enjoy with grandchildren and she shouldn’t have to work. She told me how she was going to pay all the bills with her inheritance and be happy. That was the life she always envisioned and she was upset she wasn’t going to get it. She sounded like the preppy girl complaining that she came in second place in a beauty pagent, and if she cried and screamed loud enough someone else would fix it.

She got back together with him, not for love, but live a more comfortable life. Why I won’t explicitly say that, someone who lies in bed with someone else for money as the primary reason…….

I knew this, my siblings knew this, my wife knew this. He held no power over me and I wasn’t going to have any of it. He had put my mother through months of pain, helping my mother out because of this was part of the reason I moved back to Ohio from Oregon. I had been a part of that house and family for many years. At this point he asked me to leave. As I’m walking out I’m still arguing on my way to the car. My mother told me the words that are opposite of what I’ve been told that a mother is supposed to say – she told me that it wasn’t my home anymore.

I had grown up my whole life with my mother telling me that it would always be my home. She however would choose to be with her part time husband and choose his side over mine. It wasn’t the first time she did that though. My step father told me to never come back and I wasn’t welcome there anymore. So be it. My mother has relinquished what she wants or believes in for her comfort. She tries now to deny what she said (like she always denies what she says) but my wife heard it also and her jar dropped. My wife had seen the drag out fights amongst my family, and this wasn’t the worst. This was my mother clinging to safety and the fear of being alone. If I thought she did it because she wanted to, because love made her do strange things, then I would forgive. My mother is more calculating in protecting herself though. She will protect herself over the expense of others.

For the record if my step father ever shows up on my door step, the first thing I’m doing is calling the police.

This is the incident that is the proverbial straw. Does it sound stupid? I’m sure it does. I won’t deny it. Starting tomorrow we’ll be working on how we got to here.

Read Part 1 Here

Remembering Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling

Creeva — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 06:38:44 +0000

It’s been a few years since I’ve read Hacker Crackdown. It was/is one of the best computer crime books I’ve ever read, Litte Brother is a close second. Inside the book Sterling goes over the details of the biggest computer crime sting operations of all time. I’m not going ot say everyone was guilty to the extent they were prosecuted, but some of the crimes that were prosecuted in this novel helped bring in the computer crime laws we have today (for better or worse).

The first time I read this was in 1995 on a 286 laptop with a 9600 baud modem. I downloaded the book online, Sterling was one of the first mainstream authors to release his work for free online. For someone at the time was reading Phrack and to have something that was professionally published (I’m not knocking Phrack – I loved Phrack) was a completely different experience.

The book covers the history of computer crime before it jumps into the meat of the story. Never does it really feel that the Sterling is pandering to you for anything, instead it teaches you. For anyone interested in computer crime I would highly recommend picking this up. So far I’ve worn through three copies myself.

If You Publish Something Online About Someone – Are You Talking Behind Their Back?

Creeva — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:36:25 +0000

My family has always talked about each other behind their backs. Back and forth, just some things don’t get said. I’m more of a lay it on the line and let it hang out. My brother and I don’t see eye to eye on most thing. I’ve already started in on my mother online. Is this however still talking behind their backs? They all have the url to my homepage. Most of my family at least check my site out in passing. I don’t see how I could be more public about it. I’m not secretive, but I also don’t send out a blaring e-mail saying “I JUST WROTE ABOUT YOU ONLINE – YOU BETTER READ IT NOW”.

The reason this comes up goes to a yahoo group I used to manage of just close friends a few years ago. I was egged into talking about another friends marital problems on the message board. These issues were not a secret. My post only stated that we should give them support in their time of need. Ironically the people that blasted me the most in regards to “talking about this other couple behind their backs” were the ones that were spreading this the most through IM and phone calls. Everyone on the list new, but it was secret since it wasn’t in the open.

This type on mentality is what pisses me off the most when it comes to the “behind the backs” argument. If everyone already knows and you speak about it publicly to get the whole thing out in the open, how is it behind their backs? Since I’ll be writing a bit about my mother, and I won’t keep any e-mail comments she sends me to myself – I’ll lay it out in the open. It won’t be behind a closed door – it will be transparent like glass. If she wishes to have a discussion in the comments where everyone can read what she has to say, the more the better. I’ll be happy to have it out in public.

This is having things out, secrets just destroy people. I share my life online because it’s cathartic. I do abide by certain rules. If you send me an email it’s more then likely not going show up on my blog. I respect and adore privacy, even when I will share so much of myself online. I love having discussions in public, if I’m wrong – show me I’m an ass. I don’t mind. I’m well aware there are consequences to all of my actions. I’ll own up to those and suffer accordingly. Let’s have it out and start a discussion. If your part of it, I definitely can not be accused of talking behind your back.

My Estranged Mother E-mails Me to Say – I Told You So

Creeva — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:59:24 +0000

Earlier this week this email (it’s been edited to protect names- edits in italics) showed up in my inbox:

Hi Brent.. I just want to know that I miss talking to you. I am thrilled for you and XIE as you await the birth of your new little son. I remember when the two of you came to see YOUR YOUNGEST BROTHER and I after he was born saying you will neve have kids and I said oh give yourself another ten years things may change. Here you are….I am sure XIE is getting all prepared, reading planning, etc. I think she will do great during delivery, they have so many different ways to help with relaxation during labor. After YOUR SON is born the two of you will be so amazed at that moment and your life will change forever. You will never look at certain things the same way again. And the way a new baby smells, its a special scent that only lasts a few days then fades away to the sweet smell of baby lotion bath wash. You will see, I think its a good thing for both of you, you will have alot of fun.

Love mom

Now grammar and spelling mistakes I didn’t touch, just the names to protect some people’s identity. When I told Xie about the e-mail she was miffed that my mother didn’t call. I told her that was the only smart thing my mother did for this situation. I’m sure my mother knows by now that if I heard her voice I would have just hung up the phone and she wouldn’t have had a chance to get anything out. Score one point for my mother. Though I’m going to make the wild assumption that she didn’t assume I was going to post this on my blog.

I read the e-mail out loud to Xie. I started reading it in my mothers tone and voice pattern (I do a fairly passable impression of her speaking mannerisms). I didn’t make it through the first sentence before Xie said she would smack me up side the head if I didn’t read it normal. I submitted and read it normal. The first thing Xie said after her rant on my mother e-mailing, was “So she wrote that whole thing to say ‘I told you so’.” I replied with “Yep.”

One point of view could be said that my mother is attempting to repair a bridge between a fractured relationship. Like eveyrthing else my mother attempts to do this is a selfish act. When I was younger she put guilt trips on me for not having kids because she wanted grandkids (bear in mind I’m the oldest of her 6 kids so she was bound to have grandkids). My brother already has a daughter and a son that should be born in the next couple weeks. My brother is on speaking and family terms with my mother so she has two grandkids she would have access to. My mother’s only access to me is messages that my siblings or my grandmother deliver. The only message I ever send back is that I don’t care.

As it stands right now my grandchild will never have access to her. I know how she screwed me up my siblings and myself (though I have a different world view, so I’m sure they think that I’m the one that’s screwed up). I don’t want to risk exposing my child to that. After my child is of legal driving age and can take himself over there, it will all be in his court on what he decides to do. My child won’t be forbidden from going there, but I’ve been told that I’m not welcome there and can’t come over. So I’m holding that to heart for the rest of time.

My point of view if you haven’t figured this out, is that my mom wants to be seen as the good grandmother. She follows the theory in life that it’s better to appear good then be good. Now I’m not going to say that I am any sort of saint. I am who I am. I don’t put on false airs for anyone. I don’t pretend to be someone I’m not. I’m rough, I’m honest, and I can be brutally blunt. I’m used to that and I can deal with the consequences, because I enjoy who I am.

I haven’t put more than a passing thought into my mother in the last year. When someone mentions her I give my knee jerk “I don’t care answer” and forget about her. But this email has forced me to bring the pasts thoughts to light (just when I’m in a peaceful place again). So in the upcoming month look for some articles about the problems I have with my mother. This email may look like an honest attempt for reconciliation by some, but I know my mother’s methods. I will concede that is what she believes she is doing in her mind. She is just too naive to really look at herself for who she is though.

It Had to Happen Eventually – DHS Testing Pre-Crime Detection

Creeva — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:21:49 +0000

First let’s start with something from Cory Doctorow‘s book Little Brother:

If you ever decide to do something as stupid as build an automatic terrorism detector, here’s a math lesson you need to learn first. It’s called “the paradox of the false positive,” and it’s a doozy.

Say you have a new disease, called Super-AIDS. Only one in a million people gets Super-AIDS. You develop a test for Super-AIDS that’s 99 percent accurate. I mean, 99 percent of the time, it gives the correct result — true if the subject is infected, and false if the subject is healthy. You give the test to a million people.

One in a million people have Super-AIDS. One in a hundred people that you test will generate a “false positive” — the test will say he has Super-AIDS even though he doesn’t. That’s what “99 percent accurate” means: one percent wrong.

What’s one percent of one million?

1,000,000/100 = 10,000

One in a million people has Super-AIDS. If you test a million random people, you’ll probably only find one case of real Super-AIDS. But your test won’t identify one person as having Super-AIDS. It will identify 10,000 people as having it.

Your 99 percent accurate test will perform with 99.99 percent inaccuracy.

That’s the paradox of the false positive. When you try to find something really rare, your test’s accuracy has to match the rarity of the thing you’re looking for. If you’re trying to point at a single pixel on your screen, a sharp pencil is a good pointer: the pencil-tip is a lot smaller (more accurate) than the pixels. But a pencil-tip is no good at pointing at a single atom in your screen. For that, you need a pointer — a test — that’s one atom wide or less at the tip.

This is the paradox of the false positive, and here’s how it applies to terrorism:

Terrorists are really rare. In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists. Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twenty-thousandth of a percent.

That’s pretty rare all right. Now, say you’ve got some software that can sift through all the bank-records, or toll-pass records, or public transit records, or phone-call records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time.

In a pool of twenty million people, a 99 percent accurate test will identify two hundred thousand people as being terrorists. But only ten of them are terrorists. To catch ten bad guys, you have to haul in and investigate two hundred thousand innocent people.

Guess what? Terrorism tests aren’t anywhere close to 99 percent accurate. More like 60 percent accurate. Even 40 percent accurate, sometimes.

What this all meant was that the Department of Homeland Security had set itself up to fail badly. They were trying to spot incredibly rare events — a person is a terrorist — with inaccurate systems.

Now that all being said, DHS has actually build a machine that tests for security threats. Now if this is put into production you get to be watched everywhere you go and wonder about this machine judging your intent and being pulled over for questioning.

If you would like to read more information on this please read the link below.

‘Pre-crime’ detector shows promise – Short Sharp Science – New Scientist