The Ones I DIDN'T Use

A couple of months ago, I was invited by one of Diane's extended family members to open an account on a new family tree website called Geni.com. It's a pretty neat little site where families can upload pictures, share time lines of significant events in their lives, and just generally keep in touch...which can have its ups and downs. It's family, you know. Shortly after I joined the site, I sent out invitations to several other family members to join as well. One of those invitations went out to my brother, and while most of my family members replied by joining the site, my brother's invitation went unanswered.

Now, my side of the family likes to joke around, and that includes practical jokes. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to "entice" my brother to join the website. So I found a picture on the internet (that doubled me over with laughter) and posted it as his profile picture on the website. It might have looked something like this:



Well that apparently wasn't enough to bring him out of hiding. Not "outlandish" enough. So I added another:



Now, my brother is typically someone you shouldn't screw with. He gets even...times ten. I think at about this time I received an e-mail from my mom reminding me that I was playing with fire, but I didn't listen. This was too damn funny. And he still wasn't joining. I decided to up the ante:







Finally, last weekend, he joined the site...and got his revenge. But instead of adding pictures, he added events to my timeline. So right along with significant life-events like my wedding day and the birthdays of my children, I now had new events:

1. Alternative Experimentation
2. I Came Out of the Closet
3. I Strangled My First Prostitute

Oh, and one of the nice little features about using Geni.com that I didn't realize, or at least overlooked, is that whenever you make a change to your profile or to someone else's profile, anything at all, they NOTIFY THE WHOLE FAMILY. And by the WHOLE FAMILY, I mean anyone even remotely linked to you. Diane's 16th cousin 400 times removed? Yeah, she knows my brother is a freak and that I strangle prostitutes. Greeeaaaat.

Shortly after I stop laughing at my brother's additions to my profile, I notice that my profile has not one, but TWO messages from that family member who invited me to join the site in the first place. She also sent me a personal e-mail. She was not a happy camper, and the whole frickin' extended family now knows it. And while I was thoroughly pissed off with the way she chose to handle the situation, I decided, with a little prodding from Diane (who was just as pissed), to let it go (until now) for the sake of "family harmony". Yes, I'm a "high-road" kind of guy.

But here's the real problem. I still have all of these pictures assembled for my beloved brother, and I now can't display them for my family to enjoy without other "family members", most of whom I don't even know, getting all bent out of shape. So I guess I'll just have to post them here. So without further ado, here are the one's I didn't use:









So, there you have it, the rest of my pics of my little bro. And if anyone doesn't like it, they can...