Memorial Day was pretty awesome this year. All three original Mesa Brothers were reunited for the first time since Christmas. It was my third major holiday celebration since Scarlett was born (in 2012 we only celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas), but it was the first one I hosted. Even with Danielle’s family only 3 hours away we rarely have an opportunity to have a BBQ out in the yard. I find this lack of BBQs irksome as my childhood involved lots of house parties since our entire extended family lived within 30 minutes of each other. What is the point of having a yard and home in suburbia otherwise? So I took the rare chance to take out the speakers I bought back in High School for my short DJ career and set my netbook to play from Google Music. I created a playlist of songs with “summer” in the title since Memorial Day is the cultural start of the summer in the USA.

It really sucks that I’m so far from my family.  My sole living grandfather, pictured here, is turning 70 this year.  Although I’ve always been closer to my mom’s family -  I really, really love my grandfather.  His humor, which was passed on to my father and which I hope to pass on to my son(s), has always cracked me up.  In different circumstances I think he would have liked all the same comedies I do.

I think that the single largest source of mirth at the Thanksgiving dinner was Dan’s xkcd tshirt.  Dan and I were the only ones who knew what this meant.  Dave was the only other person capable of grasping it.  Everyone else kept asking Dan to explain the shirt over and over.  No matter how many ways he tried to do it, the response was always “I don’t get it”.  Later on the response was a sarcastic “OK”.  Later on in the evening/night everyone was sudo ordering people to do things even though they had no idea what that meant.  The person who was ordered to do something would invariably answer “OK!”  IT was hilarious and maddening at the same time.

When my brothers and I were young, influence pretty much flowed in one direction - from me to my brothers. Whatever music, movies, or video games I was into they also wanted to experience. It’s not that they didn’t also have their own likes and dislikes. They did like some stuff I didn’t and disliked some of my choices. Overall, however, I probably played a larger role in influencing my brothers than even my parents.

Happy Birthday Dan.

So you may be wondering what’s up with the lack of posts. It’s not that I don’t have things I want to write about. I actually have a ton to write about, but I’ve been (nearly obsessively) working on my family tree using the FOSS Linux program GRAMPS. There’s a link for the page over on the right panel of my blog. The software is AMAZING! I really think they have done an great job. If you want to keep track of your family memories, this is the program to use! I showed my family members what the output can look like and they are impressed. Not only that, but it has also energized them to help me get more information and media! Go check them out and see how awesome they are!

Ashley has posted an apology on her blog. I accept that apology on behalf of myself. I don’t know how others who were affected feel. Perhaps next time, do not post hurtful things unless you truly mean it. You really hurt all of us, especially by talking about our mother. (Especially when they are vicious lies)

The inflammatory post which spurned us to write what we did has been removed. For the sake of understanding what got us into such a tizzy, I’ll post a copy of it.

Here it is:

I’m definitely in the anger stage of grief, but bear with me I have always tried to believe that everybody has good in them. I’m not perfect-I react to the things people do that I don’t like, but in the end I usually try to understand that people are the way they are because it’s the best they know how to be. And so when Dan’s family treated me like shit and barely like a person, I tried to understand where they were coming from. I tried to see what I was doing wrong with myself. And yes, they fed me and took me places and paid for me, but they never ever stopped manipulating Dan to turn against me when I wasnt there. And if they were pissed, they didnt mind throwing a tantrum and not looking me or Dan in the eye. And his mom competed with me, and she denies it, but everything he did for me, she wanted him to do for her. And I tried to put up with it. And I hated it, but I pushed him to keep a good relationship with his family no matter how unfair they were acting. But ya know what? I’m stronger now, and I’m pissed at the way I was treated. I’m pissed that they raised Dan to only trust his mom and that being dishonest is no big deal. I’m pissed that Dan’s siblings don’t see that she did the same thing to his brother’s wife before I came around. When dan’s brother got married, all he and his wife worried about was making that awful woman happy, and ya know what happened? She complained the entire time anyway. Yeah, on their wedding day, where they should be worrying about themselves. And I had the stupidity to feel bad for them, and try to understand them. It was stupid because when the criticism turns to me, they buy into it. That’s why Dan’s mom is so good at what she does, because she gets you in her group to complain about other people and tells you how she manipulates them, but no one relaizes she does the same thing to them. Yeah, Eric, your family used to talk lots of crap about Danielle until I came around, and I know they did because I spent time with both Dan and Dave before I was ever in the dating picture, and David has a harder time hiding things, and you all probably know that, but yet I’ve heard her making comments about Dan and I. Maybe people are just glad to have the heat off them, but that’s bullshit, because I tried to not join in on the crap talking about Danielle. And the thing is, I think everything gets denied by everybody because it’s such a habit to judge other people that they’d have to realize a fundamental flaw in their everyday thinking and they just don’t realize it. So deny away, but you’d be seriously insulting my intelligence. And yes Dan’s mom does nice things for people, but you know how you can tell that even that part of her is selfish? Because she doesn’t do nice things without telling everybody and getting mad if she doesn’t get something back. She likes to raise kids because something inside of her needs people to need her to a level that is so absurd that some of her offspring never learned to form healthy relationships with other women. On Christmas Eve, that woman actually turned to me and said “Why do you make my son so miserable?” Who say’s that to people? That is not a nice thing to say, but I just kept my mouth shut-I was dumbstruck. And she would never apologize for anything like that. And that is the kind of person I dealt with for a year and 8 months. I know I make mistakes, I know I couldve been better in some areas, I know I didn’t always do the right thing, but at least I can recognize my own flaws. And I feel regret for the bad things I do.

By the way, how is my mom obsessive and controlling if she let us move to Maryland and go to school at Cornell? YOUR mother is the one that had you go to school just 45 minutes away. And how is she selfish if she paid for your damn Disney ticket?

And my parents took out $70k in loans to let me have my dream of going to Cornell! They could have forced me to go to school locally where it was free. You are just weird.

When Ashley left comments on my AIM like “lies may be ok in your family, but mine,” and “Your family can be really hard on girlfriends,” Danielle asked me if I was goign to mount a response. I told her I would not. Although I disagreed with Ashley’s contentions, I told Danielle, “I feel that no good can come of starting a flame war. It would only bring more negativity to the universe.” Yes, although you dno’t hear too many Christians speaking like that, I feel that I feel that the beliefs expounded by the practitioners of transcendental meditation do not clash with what Jesus taught with respect to “turning the other cheek and giving a man your shirt if he asked for your jacket.” I do not like to yell or be proface with the peole who are always calling my house soliciting money even though they annoy me to no end. I do not believe that we should have attacked Iraq just because Saddam was a jerk. However, there comes a point in one’s life when an affront is so hostile that, like the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, one has to put his pacifistic, philosophic point of view aside and press teh button. That’s right, the glvoes are off and the napalm is on its way. What triggered this change of heart? This attack on my family. Like the Cubans of the 1800s or the pre-WW2 Japanese, I cannot tolerate an attack upon my family’s honor.