Happy birthday in heaven mom poems

So, I had been in a relationship myself for the past couple of years. Me and him met over half a year ago when he opened his shop at the end of my street while I was still in a relationship. We became good friends but I never looked at it in a different light due to my own relationship. We live in Morocco. I am not Moroccan but me and my mom moved out here six years ago.
I had to split up with my ex and I had to move over my stuff to the other village I was moving to, so the guy from the shop who me and my mom became good friends with arranged everything with his truck and helped us move over to our houses. He's been here for me and never initiated things while I was still in my other relationship. Now that I am seperate I opened up a bit more to him and we found out we're actually so compatable. I grieved my previous relationship within the relationship itself as it wasnt healthy. Very relieved I got out.
Me and the boy from the shop (how im going to call him here 🙃) have been hanging out and if we aren't, he lets me sleep with him on the phone since I moved out to a very big house where I am kind of scared in alone at night. Ive been waking up with his snoring on the phone in the morning ever since and I normally hate people snoring but i cant help but feel so happy when I hear his.
His dad died exactly one year ago and he has been taking over all the responsibilities since. He's from a wealthy family (much stores and appartment complexes) so he's the one who is responsible now. Very busy guy but he always finds the time to comfort me, take me out and text or calls me through the days. And obviously at night to make sure im alright here. He also has two of his own businesses to deal with, in which one of them I already help him for the last couple months.
Me and him are like the same. We breath the same. Values, humor, affection, everything. Here's the problem.
2 days ago we were drinking coffee in my backyard when he suddenly started crying. I asked him what was wrong and he confessed to me that his parents arranged him a marriage to his far cousin. Whenever they talked about it in home he would say I have to go, and ran out of the house. He doesn't love the girl and says that if his father was still alive he would just have to tell him this and his father would understand. His mom, not so much. She's been grieving his fathers death in a unhealthy way and the only thing she looks forward to now is the wedding of him and his far cousin.
I was shocked as this is not that common here anymore. He kept on crying and I just comforted him the best way I could. He confessed he was in love with me from the first day he saw me walk into the shop but never said anything as I was in a relationship.
He wants to come clean to his family but is scared his mom is not going to forgive him as his mom has already been calling and planning with the mom of the girl.
What do I do? Do I stay around waiting or do I distance myself to protect myself? I never met someone as compassionate as him and im scared he is going to go for the hapiness of his mom instead of his own. I also think his mom wants to keep the wealth in the family and thats why she thought this might be a good idea. Im an independent women who has her own properties here and I do not need their wealth. I just want to be with him for who he is as a person.
TL;DR the guy im falling in love with has an arranged marriage planned by his family

Happy Birthday, Technoblade!
I made a Technoblade playlist in 2023. The spotify link is here.
I tried to make it into a timeline as best I could. It starts with Blitz. The second song, Life, is from one of his early videos when he did a montage and I thought it was fitting for the beginning of a playlist about him. Antarctica is obviously for SMP Earth. They made jokes about the fortress of solitude when they found their home base there. And when they took over the world and were sent to trial, Techno sang Viva La Vida.
The segment of him talking about Greek Mythology is where the Dream SMP stuff starts. And after that, there are a lot of fan made songs for him. Every 30 minutes there's a song with bells because we love the sellout timer! There are a few instrumental songs that he used in his streams . Gray was used while they were killing a villager in a lava pit which never fails to make me laugh.
The playlist used to end with Exitlude for obvious reasons, but then Dream dropped Until I End Up Dead and I added it, loving the tribute and how it continued the songs, the memory after the chosen end song by Techno.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it if you listen to it.
E

Tldr the love of my life was sexually assaulted in a pub restroom and i didn't murder the bastard who did it because I didn't know how severe it was and also i was scared of someone much stronger
From childhood, I was a selfish and cowardly person who, because of these two qualities, coupled with inexperience, let down family and friends. I was beaten by my parents and offended at school, both by teachers and classmates, and I never knew how to answer. On the contrary, it began to seem to me that my bitter experience allows me to offend others, to take everything from life. I was very wrong, but definitely karma will bite me for this. My bad character and my grotesquely disgusting appearance (my left eye is lazy) led to the fact that I was fatally deprived of female attention and jealous of the men in my environment who drowned in it. Therefore, when on August 14, 2021, the most beautiful girl in my life, whom I had known for three years, invited me on a date herself, confessed her feelings to me and kissed me, I was the happiest person in the world. She was special. The most beautiful woman, dyed red hair and played rts videogames and watched anime, even let me touch her and seemed to want sex with me. However, in 48 hours everything turned upside down.
I witnessed the horrendous harassment of her on August 16th and did nothing. The rapist, our former friend, stood up and towered over her began to somehow strangely demand a kiss from her when we gathered for, as it seemed to me then, the most ordinary drinking party. I felt that she was not comfortable, but then I had no idea how bad everything was. I was too frightened by a physically stronger man to stand up for my beloved, especially since we had not officially dated yet. My God, I should have intervened already then!
The next morning, on August 17, I received a message that if I stood for her, she would have thought whether we should date or not, and since I did not see this, she does not see the point. I sobbed nine times after this message. I'm ready to cry over her right now too. What I didn't know at the time was that shortly after the kiss-demanding incident, he followed her to the restroom and started molesting her. Very bad. I even continued to communicate with this bastard for some time, not knowing the whole story. I learned about the whole picture only a week later, when we met with her in the same company on other friends birthday party (but without the rapist). It was a very difficult conversation and I made a mistake in it, my stupid head. I said complete nonsense and selfishly tried to cling to any little thing, somehow trying to rehabilitate myself, but this only hurt my beloved more. When I tried to promise that I would behave differently if I had known the full story or next time, she started making fun of me. Fucking hell. I cut off all contacts with the assaulter that same evening I had learned the full story, and he was still surprised, he said, “Why does it bother you? Fell in love with her? ”, To which I answered in the affirmative and sent the bastard to the Blocklist, after which, in the spring, I began to talk about his atrocities to the girls in our common institute. Although it hardly mattered, it was our last year at the university.
Somewhere in February, I blocked my beloved everywhere I could, because I realized that my feelings for her were not mutual and having her in my contact list, I only hurt myself. I hoped that I would forget it. Not at all. With a red-hot iron, her image is burned into my brain, heart, in my eyes. My mind is clouded, I feel disgust, shame, regret, depressive sadness, I want to cry forever. I thought that the gym and the study of foreign languages would somehow distract me from the manic desire to end a meaningless life in which I would never again touch the most beautiful and nicest woman on the planet. I began to hate my own sexuality and gladly would have self-castrated myself.
Even right now I pendulum from asexuality to wanting to fuck everyone, anyone at the first given chance. I wish this had never happened.
I want her back. More than anything in the world. I failed her. Now I have no one and nothing. My reputation is also ruined because she told everyone what happened. So now even if I wanted to find another girlfriend, I will never be able to because none would trust a coward such as myself.
It was my first time dealing with such situation and I just froze.
I wrote to my beloved and asked her forgiveness. She doesn't blame me, but when I said that I was ready to do everything for her safety for free, she said "no, but thanks for the offer." I wrote that I understand that she does not trust me, but suddenly yes, and that this is the first time in my life this has happened, to which she said that in any case I am glad that everything is fine with me and I wrote to her. I wrote her a paragraph that she gave me a lot of good emotions and this topic is difficult for me, and I want the best and make sure that everything is fine, she replied with one line "have a nice day" I wrote "you too" and deleted the chat.
I am very sad that she does not trust me and does not see me as a reliable person. She doesn't have to date me or anything, but her not trusting me hurts so much. Like a knife in the heart. I didn't do it on purpose, I panicked because it was the first time. It makes me cry and want to die so much.
Even if at some point I wanted to settle for someone else (I will never be nearly as happy as with her), I won't be able to because she told everyone what happened and news in Baku spread like forest fire.

My (32f) mother passed away almost a year ago after a long fight with cancer. She and I weren't on the best terms, I was the black sheep of the family and she made sure no one spoke to me or they couldn't see my brothers. (19m)(18m)
My 19 year old brother and his gf moved in with me shortly after. They're both on assistance (welfare pretty much) and were in school. It was going alright, but my brother has my mother's attitude and cleaning skills. The house was ALWAYS a mess growing up and I have some hard OCD tendencies because of it. I can NEVER let my place get to the condition her house was in, my clean house affects my mental health too.
This year when it came to signing up for their last courses, my SIL waited until the very last minute, so she wasn't actually able to sign my brother and herself up. This was what really set me off. The only thing I've asked them to do is go to school or get a job so that they can help me afford my place with the rising costs of living.
The condition of the house is also now suffering. They sit at home all day but won't take an hour of their day to do the dishes, clean, or ANYTHING and it's really starting to get to me. I love them with all my heart, but I can't keep picking up after them like I did when we lived with my mom.
Well...My SIL comes to me the other day and she's pregnant. I begged and begged them to be careful, because the house is way too small for a kid and I don't want to listen to a baby screaming their head off in a couple months. I raised my brothers as a teenager, and it completely killed my want or need for kids in the future, I'm happy being the fun aunt. She's maybe...2 weeks along and already super excited and made it her WHOLE personality. She's had a miscarriage in the past and is super nervous and I understand the excitement, but none of us are in the place to have a child with the rising cost of living!
I feel like I'm being taken advantage of and they expect they will just be able to keep pulling this shit, and I'm almost at the end of my rope. I have my own things also going on and I can't even focus on them or get help, because therapy is goddamn expensive. I don't regret taking them in, I love them, our family has always had a lot of trouble in life and I don't want to abandon them, but this is getting to be too much. I feel like I'm in my Grandma's position when my mom was pregnant with me and she was taking care of everything.
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. Not everyone knows about the pregnancy and I needed to get it out there.

I’m sorry this is long. I’m an over-explainer.
Basically my partner has had this friend of hers for 10+ years and we’ve been together for 3 years. I’m careful to not speak my mind on people that have been around in her life longer than I have.
The problem with this friend is that she’s always been incredibly stand offish towards me and I’ve gone above and beyond trying to make some kind of connection with her for the sake of my partner. Nothing is ever reciprocated from this friend though. I even got her and a couple of my partners friends together to be there when I proposed to my partner so they could be apart of that. (Context: my partner preferred a private engagement but told me she wouldn’t mind if friends/family ended up being there since we don’t live close to them) Her friend ended up making the trip all about her and turned the other friends (that I actually had considered friends) against me because I wanted some alone time with my partner on this 6 day trip that was for us to get engaged.
The friend pulled my partner aside on the trip and starting telling all these blatant bold faced lies about me to her like telling her she doesn’t like me because I’ve never put an effort in to get to know her and that she didn’t know about the trip until the week of (she knew 4 months in advance) and all types of other stuff. My partner told me all about it (she said she didn’t take any of what she said to heart) and when I told her that all of it was lies and I could prove it, she told me she didn’t want to see because she didn’t want to feel like she had to choose. I chose to respect her wishes and I have bit my tongue about her friend ever since even after she came to talk to us the next morning and gaslit me in front of my partner. I just chose not to really respond to her.
The friend goes on to make my partner feel bad because she was going to miss her birthday because we have a trip planned to go see my family that I only see MAYBE once a year and a family member that is dying. The friend chose not to talk to my partner for a month after that.
Now all of a sudden, my partner decided she was going to go out of her way to go on this trip for her friends birthday and when she told her, suddenly she wants to text and FaceTime my partner all the time again. Then my partner went this weekend to see her friend and her family and spent the first day with her friend going out to a couple places/bars. My partner insists on having this person be her maid of honor and I just want to shake her and yell “she’s a toxic friend and she’s manipulating you!” She doesn’t have any respect for me or my relationship and I don’t want her in our wedding. My partner is not easily manipulated except when it comes to this friend. She’s blinded by their history and I just don’t know what to do. I’m afraid of what this friend may do to cause problems for our relationship/marriage or even or wedding day.
I just don’t know how to approach this anymore. My mom tells me to keep biting my tongue and that eventually the friend will go too far and my partner will see it. She says I’ll only drive her closer to the friend and further from me if I speak my mind. I’m also trying to not take it personal that my partner has no issues with the way her friend treated me, talked about me and told lies and she didn’t care to see the proof.

When I first was shown magic, Dark Ritual (specifically bottom right) drew me in as, “woah this crazy.” Having grown up in a very religious household to CAST a card called DARK RITUAL felt so dangerous, add the artwork and I was like, “man I can’t let my mom see this.” Anyways from there as I grew up it jsut remained my favorite card simply for tickling that part of my brain and the nostalgia grew as years went on. I first saw this card around 2007.
I hope to one day have every version printed, but for now I’m happy with my little collection. There’s a few that are cheap I jsut need to get around to getting, the others though, they’re just way too out of my price point, and probably will be unless I become rich. I do plan on reframing it with a better backdrop though, even if it’s just these 6.
Anyone else have a card that drew them in, and has stayed a favorite ever since?

Phil Aston: Hello and welcome to the Now Spinning Magazine podcast with me, Phil Aston. And in this episode, I’m absolutely delighted to have with me Tony Martin, one of the UK’s most underrated rock vocalists. You’ve had a really varied career, but what we’re going to talk about today specifically is Black Sabbath and the new “Anno Domini” box set. So, welcome, Tony. Thank you so much for joining me.
Tony Martin: Thank you. And thank you for having me on the show. Very cool.
Phil Aston: A bit of context, because I think this is kind of helpful for you. My son is 30 now, but when he was 15, he set up a Facebook group, kind of saying, “One day, please can we have the Tony Martin Black Sabbath albums released?” That was 15 years ago. He was still at school, half his lifetime ago. And I think in the early time when he set this up, he may have reached out to you and you might have said something like, “I don’t think it’s gonna happen, Dan.” And here we are, all these years later, and it’s not only happened, but it comes out this Friday. How does that feel to know that these albums are now going to be available again?
Tony Martin: Well, first of all, well done to your son. It took 15 years, but he got it done. To be honest, there’s been a few periods when I didn’t think it was happening. In fact, about a year ago, Tony Iommi’s manager called me and said, “You know what, this is just so complicated. I don’t think we can do this.” So I was resigned to it not happening myself. It’s all to do with band politics, really. There are so many people involved or have their fingers in the pie that they all have to be on board. And there were allegiances changing all over the place, left, right, and center. So in the end, it was getting a bit tiring, but well done to Tony Iommi and BMG. My God, the patience they showed to get this thing together and actually get it out there. Wow. But how does it feel? It feels brilliant, to be honest. I’m very excited. I haven’t actually had these albums in my own hands physically for the past 25 years. I gave all mine away thinking I’d be able to get some more, and I didn’t. They just stopped making them. So to actually physically hold them again is really cool. What a great job they’ve done of it. So I’m thrilled and excited. And I’m helping out now because I’m not in the band, obviously, anymore. So I just offered my help to promote it and they said, “Great, let’s do it.”
Phil Aston: Isn’t it amazing? Because I’ve done quite a few reviews about Black Sabbath box sets and stuff, but this one, within about 12 hours, there’s literally 12,000 views of the review. The love for this period of Black Sabbath is actually huge. It’s grown. It almost feels as if the profile is higher now than it was at the time.
Tony Martin: Yeah, there is a kind of reason for that. Partly people have got over the “it’s the new guy” thing, and also it’s been 25 years since. So now we’re reaching out to a whole other group of people, in addition to those that were already there. But to the outside world, it looks like there was a huge gap, and to me it felt like a huge gap. But actually, the fans were always there. I’ve been waiting myself as well to get this back out there. And it’s just band politics, really. That’s all it is.
Phil Aston: Because you had that period when it was almost as if this part of Sabbath’s history was hidden because of band politics. None of this really happened, which I think probably stirred up more interest and kind of people wanting to find out more.
Tony Martin: Yeah, it could be. It’s an old famous thing, you know, if something ain’t around for a while, people start talking about it. But yeah, it’s a strange thing, the music business. You’re either in fashion or you’re not. But I am just thrilled that they’ve got around it. Just the patience they’ve shown to actually put this together. At one point they were just saying, “We can’t do it.” But I’m really chuffed anyway.
Phil Aston: I imagine there’s been compromises along the way. Lots of fans probably don’t understand how complicated the politics and all the different licenses and everything that goes on over the years, they become more and more entangled. People say, “Where’s Eternal Idol?” But of course, that was a different record label. Different people own it.
Tony Martin: Yeah, absolutely. It’s owned by somebody else. And also Eternal Idol, or “Eternal Idiot,” as we call it, was kind of reissued not that long ago. Really.
Phil Aston: That’s right. With the two CD version, wasn’t it?
Tony Martin: Yeah. So they were kind of thinking, “Well, there’s no real panic because that’s already been done and let’s just move on.” Because that would have wrapped them up in contracts for centuries, I think. I can’t even think that they’ll ever get them to let that go. But they were struggling to get the people involved with these four albums to make up their minds and do stuff. I’ve been all for it all the way along, I have to say. Obviously, because it’s my career, my history. It’s not just the band’s history. It’s ten years of my life that went AWOL. So, yeah, I’ve been up for it all the way along, but some people don’t and it’s taken them a while to get on board.
Phil Aston: I think it’s fantastic. The first one was Headless Cross. You joined one of the biggest rock bands with all that history behind it. You were an established singer with the Alliance. But this was a chance, as you say, with Eternal Idol, you went in and it was already prepared. You sang it, but this one was where you could really put your mark on it, your personality lyrically as well as musically. Can you remember what it was like actually being at the beginning of that? Did you feel comfortable around Iommi and Powell and thinking, “Right, what kind of lyrics am I going to do by Headless Cross?”
Tony Martin: Yeah, I was comfortable by then. Well, kind of. The thing is, with Eternal Idol, if I can just backstep a little bit. The Eternal Idol wasn’t the first call up. The first call up was in 1986 when they were doing the Seventh Star with Glenn Hughes. And that scared me to death because I can’t sing like Glenn Hughes. Nobody can sing like Glenn Hughes. They put me on standby back then, so I’d sort of tentatively had an introduction to Tony Iommi. Then in ’87, they got me in for the audition, and that was the next introduction to Tony Iommi. But because Eternal Idol was already written, that gave me a whole year plus a bit more to find out what this thing was. What the hell was I supposed to do? So just doing Eternal Idol like that was fine by me because I didn’t have to discover anything myself back then. It gave me a chance to get my feet in. So by the time it got to Headless Cross, now I know all the guys, and I kind of know what’s expected of me. I still had to find the “me” that I needed to find. I went around it the only way I could, by focusing on things I was interested in. I couldn’t do the lyrics and melodies that Geezer was writing for Ozzy because that was a generation before me. The stuff that Ronnie was doing was fantastic, but I couldn’t get inside his head. So I had to think about what I was going to do. I had an interest in the old gothic death stuff, like Dracula and Frankenstein, Mary Shelley type writing, and of course, in England, we have Shakespeare. Nobody speaks English like that anymore, that old English text. I thought, “Old English text, gothic death, and Black Sabbath. That might work.” So I put them all together and came up with Headless Cross, which is where I lived. I lived in a village called Headless Cross.
Phil Aston: Yeah, you put that on the map. They weren’t pleased about it. The most recognition I’ve got is my name on a bus stop. And Cozy Powell thought the album needed more death, didn’t he?
Tony Martin: Oh, that’s true. That’s actually true. We were recording “When Death Calls,” and he was in the studio playing, and he suddenly stopped. We went, “You alright?” He went, “Yeah, just remind me, what’s this song called again?” I said, “It’s called When Death Calls.” He said, “I don’t think there’s enough death in it.” And he carried on playing. So, okay, maybe he’s taking the piss, but isn’t it such a great sounding album? As Tony Iommi says, he never left Black Sabbath. So when people criticize him, saying, “You should change the name or whatever,” he never left. So it was still Black Sabbath. The riffs, the guitar sound was reaching new peaks of excellence around this time.
Because when it was just him and Ozzy, for example, it was guitar, that was it. When Geoff Nichols joined during the Dio period, it introduced a few more keyboard things. That allowed Iommi to play solos against those keyboard pads and chords. And then you come along and start sticking 50 tracks of vocal harmonies on it, like in Anno Mundi and stuff like that. It just kept developing. Sabbath isn’t really known for vocal harmonies and keyboards, but underneath that was still Tony Iommi. And it still sounded like Sabbath. We were happy to do that. We just wanted to make Tony happy and do the best for him. It was his band. So we were happy to seek out that Sabbath sound and make sure it did what it said on the tin. A couple of times, like with the Seventh Star thing, he ventured a little bit away from it. Songs like Heart Like a Wheel don’t really make the Black Sabbath sound, but it’s still good stuff. I have great respect for all of the eras that went before. I had to sing all of the songs. So I do have great respect for it. And it’s been an honor, you know, like being part of the whole story. But he was the only one that stuck it out. And we respected him for that. You’re right, they did ask him to change a couple of times. He said, “No, I can’t change now.”
Phil Aston: The next one, if I pronounce this right, it’s Tyr.
Tony Martin: Yeah.
Phil Aston: Because when it came out, me and my friends, actually, because there was no Internet back then and nowhere to go and check it, we did call it Tyr. To be.
Tony Martin: Yeah, Tyr.
Phil Aston: Watch you find in Birmingham. You know what I mean? So it actually rhymes with beer, doesn’t it?
Tony Martin: It is, yeah. Actually, it’s Tiw, which is Scandinavian for the son of Odin or something.
Phil Aston: Well, this is almost as close, probably, to Sabbath getting into almost a concept album. Isn’t it? This is a collection of songs that in another time and space you probably as a band would have gone out and performed the whole thing.
Tony Martin: Yeah, it wasn’t meant that way, but they were struggling to find a name for the album. We were recording and getting towards the end and the management called us up and said, “We really need a name for this album.” And Cozy said, “I’ve got one. Let’s call it Satanic Verses.” We went, “What, like Salman Rushdie thing?” He said, “Yeah, it would be great publicity.” We said, “Yeah, but we’ll all be dead.” So we did struggle, but they happened across the artwork. We’d done Anno Mundi, we’d done Gates of Valhalla and all that sort of stuff. They went, “What if… Tyr?” It was fine by me. So it took on the Viking sort of theme. By that time, I was thinking, once I’d done Headless Cross and started to have an interest in the Vikings and stuff. As you know, the Vikings haven’t been particularly good for us. They came over and stole all our women and sheep and whatever. But I had an interest in them as well. So I was thinking, every culture, every religion has its dark side. There’s always a devil type in a god type. I thought we could go around the world and I could do this. You could pick up on all sorts of cultures and pick out the dark side of various things. But it was the last kind of… I still did that with various other songs and various other artists. But Tyr was leaning towards that theme.
Phil Aston: It’s an excellent album. Then of course, the strangeness of the politics in Sabbath. Dehumanizer comes along and Dio re-enters the scene. You obviously had an opportunity because every cloud has a silver lining. You can go off and do your solo album at this time. But you did kind of like… It sounds like it was almost a forced relationship, the way that he was and he wasn’t. I mean, how was that period for you? Because you did demo some of the tracks, didn’t you?
Tony Martin: Firstly, it was a shock. I didn’t see that coming at all. Literally just walking out the door to the next writing rehearsals. My managers called up and said, “They don’t want you to go.” From what I recently found out, although I had my suspicions, Tony Iommi said the record label just wasn’t supporting it. They weren’t getting behind us at all. Then they started banding about all different names and stuff, and Ronnie’s name came up. They thought they’d give it a go. He said it was all on and off all the time. After they let me go, it wasn’t too long before Tony called me back and said, “Can you come back?” I said, “No, I can’t. I’m doing my solo album.” More time went by, and he called me back again and said, “Are you sure you can’t come back?” I said, “I’m doing my solo album. I really can’t.” He said, “Do you want to come down and try?” So I did. I went down and tried putting my voice on some of the songs, but it would have meant rewriting everything, and they weren’t going to do that. So I said, “The best thing is if you finish this with Ronnie, get this done and out of the way, then maybe we can talk again later.” So that’s kind of what happened. By that time, I’d done my solo album, which I wanted to get as far away from the Sabbath thing as I could at the time. I went back to doing what the Alliance and some of the bands I’d been with, that middle-of-the-road AOR type stuff. But when they called me back to Sabbath, Polydor dropped my solo album like a brick. They said, “We can’t do this if you’re going to go back with them.” So that got stopped. It’s so confusing. By the time I got back with the guys to Cross Purposes, it didn’t feel that much of a gap for me, because I’ve been talking to them and working with them through the Dehumanizer thing.
Phil Aston: Stylistically, that album, because it was on the IRS label, I know some people have said, “Well, it should be in there.” Stylistically, musically, it’s very different. I mean, you take it out. These four albums in this set, excluding Eternal Idol, they sound like a progression. Dehumanizer sounds like a kind of sidestep. Even the way the riffs are done in the songs, it’s changed. You take the vocalist out, but the music continued. You took you out and it was very different.
Tony Martin: I suppose it does a bit. If I go back and think over it, I guess that’s what it was. It was kind of an interruption into the flow of things. When we were doing Tyr, I thought we were doing really well. I thought we were onto something. Dehumanizer, in that sort of respect, does feel a little bit like an interruption. But there was some good stuff on there. Ronnie’s always been a good singer. I don’t quite know how they feel about it, but it was kind of nothing to do with me. I just let them get on with it.
Phil Aston: After that, Cross Purposes is probably, out of the four albums in this set, my personal favorite. Geezer’s back in the band now, so you’ve got his bubbling bass in there. And again, lyrically, it’s all you. Did you feel any kind of, “Oh, Geezer’s back. Will he want to help out?”
Tony Martin: I did ask. He just said, “No, you can do it.” So I just carried on.
Phil Aston
The reason why I love this album is that it’s varied. A lot of people think of Black Sabbath as the Godfathers of heavy metal, and heavy metal is always heavy metal. But if you think back to albums like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in the seventies, they weren’t all heavy metal. There were all sorts of things on there. There were keyboards and light and shade. This, I felt, connected to that album, because you had light and shade on it. So there were more dynamics in the lyrical delivery and the song delivery, in the way that Iommi is weaving his riffs around the melodies. What are your thoughts looking back on this album now?
Tony Martin: I think you’ve just summed it up. It did sort of shift up a notch. Not only that, but the sound they were getting with Leif Mases producing it, it sort of grew up. It lifted somehow out of what they’d done before. It felt like, “Oh, this sounds good.” The songwriting and the exploring we were doing with the songs and stuff. At the time, Geezer Butler said that’s the best album he’s ever been on. He never said that again, but he said it at the time.
Phil Aston: I can imagine him saying just that.
Tony Martin: But it was good. Having Bobby Rondinelli in the band as well. Technically amazing. Brilliant player. His drums close in, and he plays with his wrists. Very technical. Whereas Cozy’s drums are stretched out far and wide. He’d lean over and hit them. But great to have them both in. What an honor. I mean, it’s Geezer Butler as well.
Phil Aston: When you got to South America, Bill Ward was in for a few gigs, wasn’t he? That must have been quite surreal. Bill Ward and Geezer playing songs like Headless Cross, which they had nothing to do with.
Tony Martin: They had nothing to do with. We were kind of weird because once we’d started to get Geezer and Bill back in, they wanted to start doing more of the older songs. That just makes you look, read between the lines going, “What’s going on? Where’s this going?” Once it’s happened to you, you know it. Then you’re reading between the lines. You start to feel it. Then you go, “Ah, right.” You can feel it. They’re clearing up. I did ask if they were going to do a reunion with Ozzy. Iommi was always denying it. Said, “No, no, we’re not doing that.” But I didn’t mind. The reason for that is because I knew what I could do in the future then. I thought, “Well, if they just tell me, that’s fine. Cause then I can plan.” The first time it was a shock and I didn’t know what to do. But I was kind of keyed up for it the next time. But he kept going. They got Bill in. I love Bill. I think he’s brilliant. We did some shows with him. But for some reason, and I don’t know what it is, I mean, I can tell you Iommi loves Bill. He regaled so many stories about when they were out there and how funny it was. I never understood why they never gave him time to get back in it. When you think of Def Leppard, they made a drum kit for a one-armed drummer.
Phil Aston: Yes, very true.
Tony Martin: Surely they can find time to get Bill settled back in. Whatever problems they’ve got. I mean, come on.
Phil Aston: You would think, yeah, very true.
Tony Martin: Get on with it. I thought, “Right, this is going to go south again.” But it didn’t. We carried on with Forbidden, and then Cozy came back after his accident. It was really up and down. Confusing. People in and out. During the time I was in the band, there were eight different lineups.
Phil Aston: It was very much a revolving door, wasn’t it? Before we move on, I just want to ask, because I know a lot of fans ask this. In the booklets in these box sets, there’s an image of Cross Purposes Live. That was a VHS tape and a CD. Is there a reason why that wasn’t included in some way? Is that game politics?
Tony Martin: I did ask about that, and they were just keen to get on with it. They said, “Come on, let’s go, let’s do it.” What they told me was that they’re going to take their time now to see what else they can gather and do an additional thing to this along the way with more of that in it. With the Cross Purposes Live and some other stuff. There’s a track that I recorded with them when Eddie Van Halen came and did Evil Eye.
Phil Aston: Yes, yeah, Evil Eye, wasn’t it?
Tony Martin: Yeah. I used to take the track out. I had it everywhere. Writing sessions, recording sessions, rehearsals. I just happened to be there. I didn’t even know who was coming. Iommi just turned up with Eddie Van Halen. I went, “Holy hell, it’s Eddie Van Halen. What’s he doing here?” He did some rehearsals with us and then disappeared. Never saw him again. But I got the recordings of the rehearsals that we did.
Phil Aston: Oh, wow.
Tony Martin: So I sent them to Tony Iommi. I said, “Use these. Get these on.” He said, “No, no, we can’t.” The reason they said was anything that has the slightest newness about it looks like a new Black Sabbath track or album track. They’re not allowed to release anything new under the Black Sabbath name. So even if it’s historical, they couldn’t allow it. It’s really weird.
Phil Aston: That means there must be lots of live stuff recorded. More bands were recording live stuff from the nineties onwards that you just couldn’t work on because it would go out under the Black Sabbath name.
Tony Martin: Not just live stuff. I’ve got about eight tracks that we never released. Just from the writing sessions and rehearsals and stuff that we used to do. They just can’t get out. They just won’t allow it.
I don’t understand. Well, I kind of understand. When you’re trying to protect your name, your mark, your image, your everything, which is where the band politics comes in, they won’t allow you to do anything that they think. And there’s all kinds of… Everybody from Ozzy to Dio to everybody. They don’t want their thing to be diluted or taken away. I do understand that. There are people involved all along the way that have an objection of some kind or another.
Phil Aston: But I guess, hopefully, this box set’s going to sell out really quickly and will show there’s a demand for this material and for this part of Black Sabbath history. There’s a lot of love for it. A lot of people worked really hard within it, like yourself. They’re great albums, wonderful songs. If there’s other music waiting in the wings, whereas we all get older, thinking through the eyes of the fan, it would go down so well, wouldn’t it? But I am, as you are, very grateful that these four albums have arrived in a box.
Tony Martin: Yes, it’s an important thing for me. It’s an important thing for the band, and it’s a great thing for the fans. I’m thrilled. It’s been an honor to be part of the story. I love the fact that it’s out there now. They did say there is no limit to the box sets. They have sold out on day one.
Phil Aston: I’m not surprised.
Tony Martin: They said the way they do it is they tend to poll the outlets and stuff and say, “How many do you think you can sell?” And they put their numbers in, and they’ve gone way past that. So now they’ve got to go back and produce more. There’s no limit to it. I love what they’ve done. There’s more in the box set than just the albums. Posters, programs, and everything.
Phil Aston: And then Forbidden. I’ll be honest, Tony, when I heard this for the first time back in the day, I didn’t like it. I tried, but I didn’t like it. My son liked it because I think probably because his dad didn’t. But now the remix, it’s as if someone’s released the drums and the guitars. It sounds like a Black Sabbath album. It sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?
Tony Martin: It does. It’s brilliant. I love the fact that they’ve dismantled it and put it back in a way that they couldn’t or didn’t with the other three. Forbidden needed it for all kinds of reasons. It was done under a sort of cloud where a lot of us weren’t really into it very much. But it was also an attempt at trying to give Sabbath a kind of acceptable twist to the youth. It didn’t work.
Phil Aston: The nineties were weird, weren’t they? The nineties were strange for heavy rock.
Tony Martin: The problem was we were fast heading towards great new bands like Nirvana and eventually Green Day and Metallica doing stuff. We were going and they were trying to change the sound to fit in. It didn’t work. We didn’t think it would. But there are people out there that love Forbidden as it is. I said that to Iommi. Last time I saw him, there are people out there that love it. He said, “They’ll probably love this version now.” But shaking the chains, guilty as hell, rusty angels, forbidden. And of course, “Loser Gets It All” is a great track. That wasn’t even on the album originally.
Phil Aston: It’s brilliant.
Tony Martin: Yeah. Strange. I absolutely love it now. It does sound like a Black Sabbath album. It sounds like it should be there in amongst the others. They’ve done a great job. Tony and his engineers have really pulled it together. It’s slightly more guitar and slightly less keyboard. They’ve done Cozy’s drums. Fantastic job on those.
Phil Aston: They’re just unleashed, aren’t they?
Tony Martin: Yes. They haven’t changed anything. They’ve mixed it and given it a new attitude, which is brilliant. They’ve given it more space. It sounds bigger. I just love what they’ve done to it. I’m really proud of it now. I didn’t like it then. There’s still a couple of tracks where I would love to have gone back in and…
Phil Aston: Yeah, you know.
Tony Martin: I thought at the time, because I was that off it at the time, my head just wasn’t quite there. A couple of tracks I thought I could have done better. I did sort of say when they were doing it, “Can I go back in?” They said, “No.”
Phil Aston: I suppose because that might edge towards it being a new recording then.
Tony Martin: Yeah, tricky. I’m not going to tell you which tracks it is, but there were a couple in there that I wasn’t quite happy with. But on the whole, it’s a great job they’ve done.
Phil Aston: Because when you were playing live, there were more songs from your period in Sabbath coming into the set, weren’t there? You were a unique vocalist in many ways for the band. You could cover Ozzy, Dio. You probably could have done Ian Gillan. Anything. You could have the ultimate set list, really, going through every era.
Tony Martin: That was a bit of a mistake. I told them I could sing anything, really. They thought, “What can we give him to sing?” They threw all sorts of stuff at me. I had a shot. Fortunately, I’ve got the kind of voice that can get around most things, and that’s a result of being in so many different kinds of music. I’ve been involved in everything from reggae to rock.
Phil Aston: Who were your key vocal influences growing up? As you say, outside of this Black Sabbath badge, your voice can go in any direction. So who were your influences? Was it blues, soul, rock?
Tony Martin: It kept changing. Everything I listened to, I thought, “That’s good. That’s good.” Each couple of years, something else took my attention. I’d really pour my soul into it. When I started off with reggae, believe it or not, I worked with Musical Youth and Dexys Midnight Runners in the studio. I was a guitarist back then. Then I loved blues. I got into prog rock bands like Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull. Then it shifted to Emerson, Lake & Palmer. That led to Rush and bands like that. Then I had to come down out of that prog rock technical stuff because Sabbath is much more honest and basic and straightforward. To a point. When you’re in the band and you find out how he does it, it’s stunning. I never even gave it a thought. I thought, “It’s got to be easy.” It wasn’t easy at all. Iommi can put seven, eight different riffs into one song, and each one of the riffs could be a song on their own.
Phil Aston: Very true.
Tony Martin: So, wow. You get your head around it. It’s weird. Plus, the time signatures he was throwing at us. There was a 14/4 and a 15/8 or something he was throwing at us. How he gets his head around it, I just don’t know. When I saw him a few weeks ago, he said, “You did a really good job on this.” I said, “Thanks, man.” He said, “I actually don’t know how you sang over some of this stuff.” I said, “Neither do I.”
Phil Aston: Just mad, isn’t it? You could try anything. I might have thought, “That means you might be able to put some of the songs in that Ozzy couldn’t do into the set. Or I can try something that I’ve never been able to do before because Tony says he can do anything.”
Tony Martin: It’s because I showed willing. I told them I’d have a go. And I did have a go. I did put into it. The songs, the writing, the live shows, whatever. I kind of made a rod for my own back in some ways because it was hard flicking between all of the different vocal techniques. But I did my best. It sort of came across okay. The problem is when you try to do stuff like that, it can sound a bit like a tribute act. But we got it nailed, I think. Especially having people like Cozy Powell, Geezer Butler, and all those guys in the band. We were willing to seek out that Sabbath sound, and we were conscious of it. So we were all aiming for the same thing. From outside, it might have looked like a chaotic mess. But on the inside, it all had a focus. We were all willing to give it a go. That’s what I think they saw in me. I knew they liked my voice, but I think that’s what they saw, a willingness to have a go and see if you can make it work. All those different time signatures and riffs that I had to go, looking back, to me, it’s Black Sabbath. Like,
Phil Aston I’m a Deep Purple fan, and every lineup of Deep Purple is still Deep Purple. I know Black Sabbath, there’s lots of politics in the way some of the fans look at it. But I think, which is why they had Heaven and Hell later on instead of Black Sabbath, because of the politics. But listening to these four albums, one after the other, you brought to life Viking mythology and song. More death. Just your passion and the way you projected the lyrics and your phrasing makes these albums unique. An important part of the Sabbath story. Finally, do you feel like this outpouring of love for this lineup is validating everything? Any doubt that might have been back then?
Tony Martin: Yeah, doesn’t it just? The biggest validation is from Tony Iommi himself. It wasn’t regarded that highly until he sat and listened to it without the bickering going around. When I went down a few weeks ago, he said, “You did a great job on this. There’s fantastic songs on here.” I said, “I know.” It’s just that validation that he gives it. The fact that the fans are returning to it. The fact that we’ve got new fans coming to it. Whole new record labels. I think it’s Rhino in America. It’s BMG in the UK, Europe. The record labels are coming back to it and getting behind it. They see something in it. The management sees something in it. So it’s all coming together. Which is a shame because I’m not in the band anymore.
Phil Aston Who knows? Maybe you and Tony will think, “It’d be great if some of this other stuff can come out at some point and we don’t have to wait another 25 years.”
Tony Martin: If he was going to do that, he’d say, “Let’s just write some new stuff.” But from what I’ve been told, Tony’s touring dates are done now. He won’t be going out on the road again. That’s probably out of the question for writing. I did tell him I was interested if he wants to do something. But he’s got so much going on. He’s still busy. Doing stuff. He had that ballet, the Black Sabbath ballet.
Phil Aston: Yeah, that’s true.
Tony Martin: Never saw that coming. No, he’s working on all kinds of stuff. He’s writing new material for something else now.
Phil Aston: So what about you, Tony? Have you got any plans for another solo album?
Tony Martin: I never actually stopped. For the past 25 years, my career took me into the studio and writing for people. My voice appears on 89 albums and projects now. It’s been good for me. I owe everything to Black Sabbath because that’s how the world got to hear my voice. People know what they’re talking about when they talk to me. “Can you write, can you sing on this?” They already know what they’re hearing or expecting. I always try to make it better than what they give me in the first place. A lot of that is me in the studio, and I’m happy, and I still am, happy doing that. But I do tend to choose what I do these days.
Phil Aston: Yeah, that makes sense.
Tony Martin: So I’m still doing the odd thing for people now. I did have a solo album a couple of years ago called Thorns.
Phil Aston: Great album.
Tony Martin: Yeah, totally unknown guitarist from America, Scott McClellan. I only met him because he kept badgering me on Facebook. He kept sending me stuff. I was like, “Go away.” He said, “Listen to this. What about this one?” In the end, I listened to it and it was brilliant. So I gave it a go and it turned out really well. But then Covid interrupted that and we couldn’t get out there with it. Some countries were saying, “Yeah, you can come,” and other countries were saying, “No, you can’t.” It all got distracted. I haven’t finished with Thorns because they wanted to do a vinyl for it. They said we had to take some tracks off to get it to fit on the vinyl. I don’t want to take any tracks off.
Phil Aston: Make it a double.
Tony Martin: Yeah, make it a double. Write some more. I wasn’t prepared for that. I’m pacing up, trying to write some new songs. Scott has sent me loads. We’ve got enough tracks for Thorns 2, but I haven’t finished Thorns 1 yet. I’ve got to come back to that. I do want to finish that off and get that done. Then if we can do the next Thorns thing, who knows? We’d like to try and get it out on the road. Getting out on the road for me is so different to the Sabbath thing. The Sabbath machine is huge. They only have to mention it and all the cogs start turning all at the same time all the way around the world. It all starts fitting into place within days, within weeks. On your own, it’s different. I can’t do that. I have to hire other musicians to go out on the road and rehearse the whole thing and start again with a brand new show. It’s a lot harder for me, but I would love to get back out there. My career took me into the studio, so I’ve got more to do. But I just tend to choose now.
Phil Aston: If people want to get Thorns, is it DarkstarRecords.net? Is that the best place?
Tony Martin: No, Battle God. They are the main label. Darkstar were involved and they’re still there, but they’ve had some troubles in the past couple of years. They were on board and I did two versions of it from between the two territories. I liked that. But mostly now, Battle God is the label to grab hold of it. It’s still available and I’m still signing them. People send me the stuff to sign.
Phil Aston: But I haven’t finished yet, so there’s more to come.
Phil Aston: Brilliant. Well, thanks very much, Tony, for all of your time today. Everybody, make sure you go and get a copy on CD or vinyl of this Black Sabbath Tony Martin years box set, “Anno Domini.” It’s absolutely superb.
Tony Martin: Yeah, it is good. I’m just smiling. I think it’s brilliant.
Phil Aston: No, that’s it, isn’t it? Whatever anyone thinks, these albums are available again. People can hear just how awesome this time for Sabbath really was.
Tony Martin: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Phil Aston: All right, take care, and hopefully I’ll talk to you again in the future.
Tony Martin: Thank you. All right, Phil, thanks, mate. Cheers.
Phil Aston: Well, a huge thank you to my guest, Tony Martin. That was fantastic. I’m almost lost for words in knowing what to say to sum up that interview because I know a lot of you are really interested in this box set, “Anno Domini” by Black Sabbath, which is out on CD and vinyl. Just as I thought, it’s sold out already, but there’s going to be another pressing. I was able to ask some of the questions I know some of you have been wanting to know, like why weren’t there extra tracks? Why wasn’t the live Cross Purposes included, etc. So now you know. Some of it is really exciting because it means there might be a companion set with some outtakes or live stuff as well. That’s really exciting.
Tony Martin is a fantastic vocalist, really passionate, really imaginative with his lyrics and his vision of how he writes his music. These four albums are essential. They’re Black Sabbath albums, okay? That’s what they are. They sound like Black Sabbath albums. Wasn’t it interesting that Geezer Butler said Cross Purposes is the best album he’d ever played on? It is a truly remarkable album. But they all are: from Headless Cross, to Tyr (which I can now pronounce correctly), Cross Purposes, and Forbidden, which has been given a new lease of life. Seriously, it is incredible. Just stunning.
Thank you again to Tony Martin for joining me here on the Now Spinning Magazine podcast. Please keep spinning those discs, whether they are vinyl or CD. Check us out on the podcast. We’re on every platform you can think of, from Apple to Spotify to Amazon. Of course, we’re on YouTube. Please subscribe and check out the website at nowspinning.co.uk. Remember, music is the healer and the doctor. So take care and I’ll see you all very, very soon.
Watch the full interview here
Phil Aston Now Spinning Magazine

Recently me and my husband decided it'd be best to just not be together anymore we have 2 kids and we still live with each other being he is the only one who works. We decided this last week but maybe 5 days ago he started acting as if we were together the kisses, cuddles all that and it made me super happy in my mind I thought oh we're fixing things but no the mest up thing is he thought he could do that but in his mind still not want to be with me so now I'm super mest up because the only reason I couldnt be with him was because of the fact that he lies to me about women , women at his job and when I asked him what he was doing and why string me along he said he didn't see nothing wrong since he's currently not with anyone and he hasn't been so why not . Then he proceeds to tell me about a women from work that he likes to top it off she's a mom as well ? Like that really hurt and now he's shutting me out no texts just basically he's mad at me for shutting it all down

TLDR: my SO forgot to send me my train ticket to our town where we arranged a surprise birthday for him and then was 3 hours late.
My SO of 2 years is a kind guy with many good traits, however, he’s very irresponsible and really fails at planning. After sitting down and pointing out to him that he is always late (usually half an hour) to everything, he took it really badly and didn’t believe he was ever late - he always has some excuse. I expressed to him it really bothered me because it was disrespectful to my time and everyone else’s, even if he is an otherwise very affectionate and great partner. He agreed on my stipulation to try to leave 20 minutes earlier than he normally would to be on time to things. However, I’ve still had to constantly wake him up every morning to go to work because he doesn’t set alarms at all, and he’s often waking up 5 minutes before a meeting. His reason is he isn’t a morning person.
We had been planning a birthday outing, and since I was at my university this week for experiments, he was going to buy my ticket to make it there the day of since I only work part-time. I confirmed with him we should meet at 2:00 pm. As usual, his phone was dead and I was unable to get ahold of him to check where the ticket was, because it seemed he forgot to send it to me. I ended up waiting at the station for 2 hours before buying myself a ticket, which meant I had less funds for his birthday. After getting there, we ended up waiting 3 hours in total because he consistently sleeps in until 2-3 pm after playing video games all night. It was very embarrassing and rude. He tried blaming me by saying I said that I would be leaving at 2, but this is a common excuse as well. It I mpacts his entire family and his mom and siblings are also tired of it. We’re always waiting for him to go anywhere and we are always late.
Is there any hope of improving this behaviour? What can we do?

Edit: DO NOT message me a simple hi or hello, with no information about you, Put some effort in to your message like i have, come on. Day+Attempt#200
Hello everyone, Thank you for taking the time to read, I know its long, I know - I know. But its worth the read, Trust me. I appreciate you immensely.
Here's a bit about me,
My name is Jay, I live on the East coast of the US. I'm looking for love - like everyone else on here.., but you may not believe or even be doubtful that I've never had a GF before with me being 26, but its true. I'm simply just not willing to "be with" just anyone and I'm very picky. I want us to be a match, more than just have similar things in common.
One thing I have always been told is that I'm a "Real Catch, I'd be extremely lucky to have someone like you" - WELL THEN TAKE ME. I'M FREE. LOL.
About me:
Physically -
~I'm a semi-tall guy, around 5'10.
~I'm thin but muscular.
~I have dirty blonde/ brown hair.
~Changing colored eyes.
~A voice nice enough to melt all your safeguards and get right into your heart and weak spots.
~I do not have any tattoos or piercings. Though I would like to get some eventually.
If you'd like to see a picture of me just ask and I'll show you - IF I may see you as well, I simply just don't want a picture of me out there for anyone to see.
-If there's anything else you'd like to know just ask.
Otherwise -
~I do have 3 pet bunnies I would be more than happy to show you, they are extremely cute.
~I'm a very honest and down to earth guy.
~I'm very patient and easy going.
~I'm very curious and inquisitive. I will try to ask everything I can to learn all about you haha.
~I'm Very VERY Kind & Caring, I will probably ask how you are feeling a bajillion times a day, simply out of care for you.
~I can get pretty clingy, and will always want your attention and to be talking with you. If i have someone im interested in i wont want to talk to anyone else🤷‍♂️
~I'm very trustworthy - you can confide in me, and entrust your deepest secrets and I wont tell a soul.
~I'm a HUGE hopeless romantic, im old fashioned and will always try to impress you.
- I'm, a BIG softie even though I may look a smol bit intimidating, but I'd do just about anything to see you smile or laugh. And yes.., I do mean anything.
~I'm a big goof - I will get up to some silly shenanigans ALL the time, I will crack dumb jokes and send you memes and tik toks just to make you happy, even if its from across the room I'd wait to see your reaction lol.
~I'm extremely loyal, and would never even think of cheating.
~I will cook for you, and clean up too, even around the house, I'm very self productive and don't ask for much. Just don't forget to kiss the cook.
~I'd also love to just cuddle up and watch a movie or read a book together, anything to get us closer. Id try to take you out on dates whenever possible haha. I have a million SUPER romantic date ideas I have but have never had anyone interested enough in me to take out. Here's your chance ;)
~I will always want to share stuff I find interesting with you, and try to share every moment of every day with you. I'm not looking for someone who can only talk for a small amount of time, I want someone who's willing to put in all the effort I put into them back into me, it goes both ways. If I'm "with" someone you are my TOP priority nobody and nothing else would be. You would be the only person I'd truly want to talk to, so rest assured I would NEVER cheat, even more so because no one is interested in me - Hence why I'm here hahaha.
I'm sure there is more to me than this snippet but I cant think of more at the moment haha, so get to know me and find out more about me.
Some of my interests are: Engineering- I'm a nerd. I admit it. I love being technical and hands on, I love building things. All kinds of things, from furniture, machinery, and reverse engineering anything I find. I love learning how things work and trying to improve things.
Music - I prefer music with a very fast pace, or with some very meaningful lyrics I can relate to. I love to sing along to music and songs that have a deep meaning behind it I can sympathize with makes it all the better. Some bands I like are: Bad Omens, Beartooth, Demon Hunter, MIW, I9K - The list goes on. I'm a bit of a metalhead unfortunately.
TV Shows & Movies - I love watching shows, and I'd love to stream some shows and have some E-dates with you, to get to know you, or if you are close to me, maybe we could do it in person. Some shows I like or more of the Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Comedy, Action, stuff like: National Treasure, Halo, BattleBots, Rick and Morty, AHS, Anything Marvel or DC, The Witcher, Wednesday, The Sandman, The Magicians, The Umbrella Academy, ETC.
Gaming - Yes yes I know, Basic guy likes basic stuff. But gaming has been a thing for me since forever. I know most of you wont care or want to hear that, but I'll leave out the specifics on this part unless you are interested in that, MEGA Bonus points if you are.
Here's a lists of Cons to dating me-
~I'm not Ryan Reynolds. Disappointing, I know.
~I will fight you on what goes on pizza lol.
~I'm not rich.., Yet.
~I can't pronounce Worcestershire.
~I'm slightly forgetful, but with good reasoning.
~(Not really a con but- some might disagree) I still have ALL of my firsts, Do with that what you will c:
~I've got an endless pile of love and affection and no one to give it to! What a dilemma! Help me fix it?
Other than that I'll save the rest for a bit more of getting to know each other.
Here's a bit of what I'm looking in you:
~Preferably someone with lots of free time, and loves to chit chat. I'm seriously not interested in getting 1 message a day. Though I understand people get busy, I personally am not willing to try to learn about you and form something with 7 responses a week. Effort gets reciprocated and I appreciate the time you put in me.
~Physically: -I’m not personally attracted to anyone who’s “curvy/ chubby”, I apologize. Not a shallow thing, I just dont have the attraction chemical in my brain for that, I’m sorry. -If you’re shorter than me, thats a plus to me. -I love dimples, if you have those when you smile, bonus points 😊 - I’m not sure what else to put.., but as for nsfw wise find out😂
~I'm a sucker for a different accent other than American, and if you have an Posh English accent you have already won my heart.
~I'm also only really looking for someone within the ages of 18-35. I don't want anyone old enough to be my mom lol.
~I'd prefer (But not a must) people NOT on the other side of the world, as other time zones SUCK. I don't expect to find anyone who also has never had a boyfriend either, but that would be a real plus. I also don't mind a LDR, but I don't want that forever. But it gives us time to get to know each other.
But as for attributes I'm looking for in you:
~Someone who is above all else very very Loyal and would never cheat.
~Someone who is Honest, and will tell me the truth over a little white lie.
~Someone who is Kind & Caring, who'd constantly check on me, and accept me for who I am & help me improve day to day.
~Someone who is trustworthy, and I can count on to keep my secrets safe, or even just help me remember things.., I do tend to be somewhat forgetful.
~Someone who is very Patient and wants to see me succeed and will help me do so, just like I would help you. Even if its small day to day things, I would appreciate your company ANY time.
~I want a partner who is Affectionate, can reciprocate, and loves to snuggle and talk about their day, and what their interests are, and what makes them happy.
~Someone who can admit they get clingy or overprotective is a bonus.
~A partner with good communication is key, if something wrong we have to be able to talk about it.
~A partner who likes to game with me or at least watch me play would be a plus but not a requirement.
~Someone with a good sense of humor and like to joke around, I am a big goof after all and I love to joke around. Sending memes is always appreciated and good to cheer people up too!
~I'd prefer someone with the same music taste, but not a requirement, Plus if you wouldn't mind if I send you love songs occasionally that's a bonus, or sending me some back haha.
~Being willing to voice call is a must, Texting forever is not the way to go. I have to know what your voice is like haha, later on we can video call if you are comfortable with that. I prefer chatting on Discord because Reddit messages of any kind I'm sure you know are unreliable and sucky in general. So please send me your discord if you have one :)
~I would LOVE to see picture of your pets if you have any. Bonus points if it includes your beautiful self haha.
I'm sure there is more I'm looking for but I cant think of it right now haha, I will have to edit this when I think of it.
Please tell me about you as an opener! I told you a good bit about me, now its your turn haha.
Tell me some things like -
~What's your name?
~Where are you from?
~How old are you?
~What are your hobbies / interests?
~What about my post interested you?
~Where is my TV Remote?!
~Selfie? Pet pics?
~Hit me with your best joke or meme :)
~What's your favorite candy?
I'd LOVE to get to know you, and see where things go.
But yeah, I know it was long I'm sorry haha. Send me a message and lets get to know each other! :)

Happy pride!! My mom texted me this morning asking if i knew pride was happening in the nearest big city, and i got so happy thinking she thought that was important for me to know. I havent really felt like i was a part of the queer community and also felt some insecurity about my sexuality, feeling like i need to prove it (but i try to just let i be and give myself space for doubt and mixed emotions!). I am a 24 year old bisexual woman. But lately i have been feeling a bit down, wondering who the hell i am, what i want and where i belong.
I've just finished a year at a new school, and the year before that i was at a different school. I've noticed how both years started out with me being very open and wanting to connect with lots of people and immediatly falling in love with the most charismatic straight guy! Then as the social dynamics and groups start to form, i start to feel more and more resent towards the patriarchal dynamics. AND this connection that i built with the guys i fall in love with, just goes to hell. To me it has felt like, that they (the guys) really like me in the beginning and that we connect on different levels. But then as the year goes by i start to get annoyed by their social role, how they always have to be the center of attention and everyone just supports that, laughing even when what they say isnt funny. Note, both of these guys have had girls who are very kind as their closest friends troughout the year. And at the same time i feel like the more i am myself, and set boundaries, the less they like me. This was kind of a side story, but i think it's funny because it's kind of like a metaphor for how i feel as a woman in society. Sure you are applauded for taking up space, joking and being a leader when you at the same time accomadate the social rules and uphold the mood, but not if you say no and act the way you feel, then you are just annoying and bossy.
At the end of both years i have been wondering if i am ever gonna be happy in a heterosexual relationship with a cis guy, thought a lot about feminism and felt very strongly about it and women in general, and also felt more attracted to women than men. I do have friends who are gay, but none that really attend pride or go to gay clubs. Im not sure exactly what im asking, but maybe just wondering if anyone has had the same kind of thoughts and feelings, and if you have any advice on how to join queer communities. Lots of love from a young gal who wants to feel comfortable in her sourrondings and MORE of life :)

I had a decent relationship with my brother and dad for my whole life, until I became a SAHM. I have an advanced engineering degree and my license but it upsets them that my only contribution to society at this point is 'picking up my kids crayons'. When they call or visit, I listen to them talk the whole time about their traveling, job and hobbies (dad's retired), how stressful it is for them to manage their cleaning ladies/lawn mowing service/whatever it is. My brother told me he refuses to hire anyone for his startup that has a family because they won't be 100% focused on the company. I just sit and listen. If I send them a picture of my son it's ignored.
Now I'm pregnant with #2 and I feel as busy as we were in the newborn stage. We moved to a bigger house and have a big yard to manage, I clean the house myself, cook most meals... like most of the SAHP's I'm guessing. When my son takes his nap, I need to nap or clean. I don't want to spend my very limited free time on the phone listening to them complain and talk about themselves. I feel selfish because maybe they just need someone to talk to. But I'm now dreading their visits (infrequent as it is) and calls. They have no interest in my son and haven't asked about my pregnancy once (not a big deal bc they're men but it still feels weird).
Does anyone else feel this way? I feel bad and hate when people act too busy to make time for relaxing and stuff but I genuinely feel too busy at this point. I woke up early to cook breakfast and clean before my dad's visit, now the lawn while my husband is able to be with our toddler inside, and we have a laundry list of stuff to do before a birthday party later.
I love the life I'm living and wouldn't trade it. I think maybe it makes them uncomfortable seeing me just being a parent, and not making an income. I got really lucky and my husband makes a great salary and we just bought a nicer house in a great neighborhood. My parents divorced when I was born and there was never time for us, but were still upper middle class. I'm making friends who have a similar mindset as me so I don't think I'm crazy. But at the same time, even my sister, mom and grandma have told me I need to put my son (he's 1.5 btw) into daycare so I can go back to work 'for his benefit'.
Just a rant 😭

I'm a Massachusetts kid (well, not a kid anymore), in a heteronormative marriage with most of my friends and some of my family part of the LGBT+ community, heck, my brother helps to manage LGBT+ parades in his neck of the woods. I was part of the GSA in my high school for heaven's sake.
So even though it's completely safe and accepting to come out, I've still kept myself closeted to all but a select few until today. If it was that nerve-wracking for me, a no-risk...I just can't imagine what it's like for most of you.
Happy Pride and stay safe.

Hello everyone, I am a 18M turning 19 soon ( Going to University) and the person in question is already 19F ( Not going to Uni because of VISA problem). I have social communication disorder and I’m not particularly good at social dilemma. I have already done a lot of research on how to move forward but I figure I should also post on reddit as well to get some more tailor advice and input from strangers.
There is this particular girl I meet in high school at 8th grade that I really enjoyed talking to ever since I meet her. I really liked her, from our chemistry together to our similar immigrant backgrounds ( I am Chinese who is born in Vietnam, and she is Filipino. We both went to private school back in our country and in similar socioeconomic backgrounds.) to how she looks sort of like me ( Same eyes, same nose, and I also have some feminine facial features). She also are interested in similar subjects as I am, as we’re both into really into Jungian Psychology, and we’re into East Asian pop culture ( Although I am more interested in Anime while she is interested in K-pop). While there is some differences between us, for instance I am more self contained and analytical ( Very INTJ) she is less so and more carefree than I was. Perhaps because we’re very similar to each other but slightly different enough, our chemistry really work well with each other. For instance, I am usually more serious and blunt while she sort of ease the tension a little bit and make our conversation more fun and less serious. Like a comedic duo. I really like her, which is why I confessed to her in tenth grade. I am very cautious and I thought I had great but not certain chance of success, that being said I was aware of the possibility she would rather stay friends. I confessed, gave her the next day to think about it. In the morning, she hesitantly told me she would give me a chance and I was ecstatic. But by lunch time, she said she didn’t want to date me anymore and her reason was that she’s not ready and in the right place to be dating just yet. I was sad and confused as I’m not too well aware what she is referring about but she said no and I still wanted to be friends with her so I said that it’s okay and we can still be friends. For the next 6-8 month we remain friend till the end of 10th grade. She told me she going to a private school, and at that point I thought I understood why she changed her mind at dating. I wished her the best, and said she has my instagram and we could hang out if we’re free. We said goodbye and we never hangout after that.
For almost two year during our 11th grade till the end of 12th grade, I honestly just forgot about her. I was busy with school, made new friends, and don’t really used instagram much and just didn’t really have an interested in talking to her. Life just happens, and I’m not really the person who get attached or fixated on someone and I don’t think she was either. On the 2nd of May 2024 ( Almost a month ago), we just randomly meet each other on a bus. Just a crazy coincidence really, I mean I don’t use SM much and didn’t really tell anyone my schedule so no way she was stalking me. We got talking again and we still have the same chemistry between us, and of course more importantly, she is still very attractive. We’re on friendly term and so I asked her why did she reject me in 10th grade. She gave me the same answer, and I confessed that I felt guilty because I didn’t know she had to move school and it was probably for the best she said no. It wasn’t awkward at all, she smiles a little I think. We kept talking after that, I even got off the bus early to keep talking to her. Then she told me to hide because her mom is really strict about her being with a boy. I thought what?? It’s 2024 and she is 19, what is she on about. But I still complied and there was a rock we just sat on and just kept on talking for two hours until it was dark. I probably could still talk to her another hour or two but she said she had “curfew” and can’t be home to late which I thought was really weird and honestly I didn’t process when she said that so I just replied okay and nod and said I really like talking to her and want to keep talking. But no instagram, I wanted her phone number. She gave me her phone number and we just hugged and said our goodbyes.
We decided next Saturday to hangout, and Saturday came and she had to abruptly canceled it. I told her it’s fine and we can just reschedule it. She left me on read. For two day. I am diagnosed with SPCD ( one way to view it is I have autism but only the social deficit parts of ASD), and I really thought I fucked up. I really start having an existential crisis because in the past I assume people were having a good time when they didn’t. And in my head, I really thought I was experiencing a different realm of reality than her. I thought our entire relationship was a lies I made up and that I had forced her to hangout with me. After all we never hang out outside of high school, she said no to my confession, I followed her out of the bus but she didn’t want me to know where she lived, I was the one who said to hang out on Saturday but she canceled abruptly. I wrote a very long text basically apologising, and saying that it’s okay and I won’t forced her to hangouts. A day later she replied saying oh don’t overthink it, and that she will replied properly. Then a week go by, absolutely nothing. See, what I don’t understand is she doesn’t go to school, has only a part time job, how is she replying so late? Then on the 8th day she replied. She said she is very sorry and that it was unacceptable and gave me the reassurance that I didn’t fuck up. She said she still wanted to see me. We set up another time to meet, over three week since I last saw her. I saw her around 5 day ago, and I went in wanting to ask so many questions but when I saw her, my brain were so conditioned that we just talk like how we always talk to each other. But I did learn one big thing, her family are Protestant Christian. I made small talk about that but didn’t ask any personal question. Then after that we just went to her house, and we just kept yapping and yapping in the living room. We had so much fun, we almost forgot I had to leave soon cause her mom is coming home. But fuck, I was supposed to confront her but we just ended up having so much fun. Idk how to feel anymore, the more I learn about her the more I realised what a pain in the ass she is, and the more I realise maybe I shouldn’t pursue a romantic relationship. I still really like her though…
But I am thinking maybe we should just remain friends, she really is not in the right space to date right now. Beside, I really don’t think she saw me as someone to date, very sad whomp whomp. Thinking of next time I see her I’ll just actually confront and clarify and set boundary in our relationship. If she see me as a friend then I’m happy too, but my penis is not very happy. If she does like me and seek to pursue a romantic relationship then I probably have a lot of work to do.
I don’t know when we will see each other again, I saw her five days ago. After we last saw each other, she said she had a lot of fun :D so I texted that I wanted to see her again. She left me on read for the last 5 days now.
If you guys have any advice, input, comment then leave it down below.

Hello!
I’m a mom of a kid who is heading to Carleton Engineering in Sept. And I’m sure you know how moms can get, so I’ll try not to helicopter too hard here…
My kiddo is trans feminine and I’m wondering about the vibe on campus for the LGBTQ+ community. They’ll be far from home for the first time and I just want to get a feel for what to expect.
Happy Pride month! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

Deep down I knew I don’t need permission or confirmation that my mother is generally malignant and the ultimate source of suffering in my life right now. But I can’t accept why my own mother would do that to me.
So I am turning to you for advice, support, and insights for ways to separate yourself emotionally and individuate from your parents later in life when you should've done so much much earlier. The adult part of me knows what I should do but there is also a part of me that is frightened. let me give you a snapshot of my life trajectory. The story is long but I want to give you as much contexts as possible. If you want a short summary of the dilemma, go to the last paragraph, otherwise, here is my life story (it is long because I want to give as much context as possible, and also show clues for the many different ways a narcissistic parent can disrupt your life): I grew up in a well-to-do family in an East Asian country, my parents gave birth to me when they were in their early 20s and just as their business started taking off in the 'boom years'. Both of them came from very broken family, my mother suffered poverty, abuse, and neglect from her parents (she did not speak to her dad until he died, and almost never acknowledges her mother). My father was the least favourite child in his family of three, he dropped out of high school, ended up on the street (and, as I learnt a few years ago, later in prison for getting into fights). My mother met my dad (21) when she was 19 and ran away from her hometown, they grew a very successful business together in the early to mid 20s and became incredibly wealthy for a society that is generally still very poor. I had a lot of luxuries in my early childhood, we had a car, I had good clothing, but my parents were never around. I started boarding at the age of 3, and generally spent most of my time outside of kindergarten and school with my paternal grandparents, and occasionally, my mum's mother. My parents fought a lot, and I remember my mother threatening to take me away from my dad and drove away from home with me in a car with nowhere specific to go. Once things got really bad and my mother told me that she is divorcing my father, and we even went into another flat (for a grand total of 1 day) before returning home. She emotionally smothered me, told me that she would die for me and nobody would love me as much as her. As the expression in our language puts it ' You are a piece of flesh fallen from my body'. She hit me a lot, often over small things , sometimes in public, I remember being thrown outside of our apartment and crying in the corridor. But I thought she was better than my father, whom, in my mother's words, would swiftly remarry in an event of her death/departure, and I would then be abused by another evil mother in law and her offsprings. My dad was completely absent from my childhood save for the first year (I remember playing video game, going to the park with him at the age of 3).
Although my family was wealthy, my mother took me out of the posh international school I was in after 6 months and sent me to a state school that is (in)famous for being extremely strict and militant. I was a 'good, smart kid' in primary school, but when I got to the state school at the age around 12 or 13, I became very depressed and that life has no purpose. I was falling at almost all school subjects (except History), and I started drinking (my dad drank a lot, and alcoholism is culturally tolerated if not perpetuated). At this point something happened that saved me in retrospect. My family decided to emigrate to an anglophone New World country and I went to yet another boarding school there. Yes, I experienced racism and generally felt horrible about the way I looked (not good looking in the Western sense or sporty), but I got to be separated from my family and grew as an individual. My grades got better, and by year 12, 13 I was among the best performing students. Between 13-18, I rarely see my father (perhaps once or twice a year), my mother would visit periodically, they bought a house next to the school, so I started to live in the house (mostly alone, sometimes with my mother and whatever hapless young women she manipulated into being her assistant). My parents couldn't speak English, and I dealt with most family matters, as with many first gen immigrant kid. By the time that I was supposed to go to university, I wanted to do law & politics at the public university in my adopted hometown but then my father intervened stating that I would never get a good job at a respectful company with a degree from the backwater 2nd rate university. He insisted that I should go to the U.K. or the U.S. He also stopped me from taking a gap year to travel, so I mostly stayed at home, played game, whilst being a driver and an assistant to them for a year. I regret not leaving home and getting a job. I applied to many universities in the U.K, Canada, and Australia, got into most of them, and ended up choosing the worst ranked university because I wanted to be in London. I couldn't do a conjoint degree so I chose to study politics (as that's what I was interested in). University life was eye opening, I got to see Europe, realised that the world was much bigger than the conformist, conservative East Asian country and the backwater suburbs with strip-malls and junk food stores I grew up in. But the degree did not prepare me for life, and all those years of bad parenting, emotionally under-development made me miserable in my first taste of adult relationships. I chose emotionally distant if not abusive friends, was a horrible person who hurt people who actually liked me and loved me. I did no internship or travel because I was expected to go home during school holiday, helping them move house, looking after guests, and being the 'little husband' when my mother was giving brith to my youngest sibling. I really wanted to stay in London, I looked for jobs, very random jobs because I had no life skills and never ever made my own money. So in the end, I left, and had to return to East Asia. By this time, my father had moved to another, more cosmopolitan East Asian city as his lifestyle became more and more extravagant. I lived with him and started interning at a fancy company in the culture industry. I worked there for almost a year hoping they would offer me a job, they did not. I got another job fairly soon in brand consulting, and finally at the age of 23 started making money. I had a relationship with an older woman, she was kind and tolerant, and I was an arse. I also realised that I cannot combine intimacy and sex at this point. I tried to start my own freelancing consultancy, acquired the ability to impress other people (faking it). Things seem to be working, I almost made enough money to support my life, but I was fundamentally lost and unhappy. I had the first depressive episode in my life. I wanted to go back to London, to get a Masters degree. So I applied and got into my dream school, my father agreed to pay for my education, so off I went to university again. That was probably the happiest year of my life, it turned out I loved elements of academia, research, being with other smart nerdy people. I met an intelligent, caring, and beautiful woman, and we moved in together soon after. I discovered more fulfilling, freer ways to live, I found proofs that a successful life was not just about working for an investment bank, or being rich. I wanted to be an academic, so I applied for a PhD at the school, and I got in after two attempts. Academia isn't all rosy, the work condition is pretty awful, the publish or perish mentality literally sucks every last bit of joy and fulfilment out of research, I loved teaching, but quickly learnt that teaching matters little at a 'research university'. I got fat, my relationship got really bad, sex became non-existent, arguments soon turned physical, and I thought that I was a real piece of shit and better off dead. The only thing that kept me going at the time? Bitterness and shame. I felt indebted to everyone, to my partner because I was an abusive arsehole, and to my family because I was stupid enough to do a PhD and wasting their money (and my life away). The pandemic hits, and sure enough, things got even worse, I felt like I couldn't carry on anymore and that I needed to radically un-f my life. My solution to this: was to finally become the person my family wanted me to be, filial, loyal, and rich. I was ready to threw my life in London away, everything, my home, my girlfriend, my PhD and move back to East Asia to become rich, and 'stop being a loser'. I came home to 'fix my family' and showered everyone with love and attention in ways I never did. I networked and explored ways to get into finance, and I got an at a VC firm. Soon enough, the whole thing completed backfired and my life started to unravel faster than I could count to three. I hated the internship, it fundamentally clashed with who I was and my value, I cried everyday in the toilet at work. I also broke up with my girlfriend for a person who was the poplar opposite of her that I had no attachment to (and sex was great because there was zero emotional intimacy). Within 3 months, I had very little savings left, was living in a short term rental apartment, and spent most of my time in bed and eating very unhealthily. Luckily, I had a therapist, a good friend in Shanghai, and my girlfriend was willing to give me a second chance. It was also around this time I realised how my family's (what do you even call it) emotional neglect might have contributed to my unhappiness and depression. I was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and medicated, the medicine helped for me to move out of paralysis. But I wanted to tell my family that I am very unwell and get them to love me back, so I confronted them over things they have done to me as a kid and showed them the diagnosis. My mother did not handle this well. She called me horrible names, made fun of me, and accused me for being a horrible son. This whole ordeal made me realise that I needed to break away from them, and what I had thrown away in London was actually the most valuable things I have in life, a career, a family, my own identity. After confronting my mother over her abusive behaviour and emotional smothering, she vowed to never see me again. However, after 6-8 months, she sent me a large chunk of money for my birthday. So I, stupidly, let her back into my life again, a part of the reason was the financial help that I needed (to feel safe mostly), but I also really wanted to see proofs that my parents actually did love and accept me after all. At first, things got better, she came for Christmas, visited a few times, celebrated her birthday, and looked really happy. Both my partner and I spent a lot of time with her, bought her gifts, cooked for her, and hang out with her to make sure she feels loved. But soon, she started complaining that she actually had a horrible time and was mistreated by my partner. To make matter worse, a year and half after I left home for the last time thinking that I would never go back, my parents promise to buy me a flat (and started to pressure me to get married). I accepted the flat, thinking that it would offer stability and freedom (pushing away the past experience of their emotional neglect and abusiveness). Sure enough, the flat became yet another way for my mother to mess with my life. It had daunted on her that I am about to become my own person and live in the flat and start a family of my own, so she lashed out and said if my girlfriend lives there she would sue me and reclaim the flat. She then went behind my back and started disputing the flat's ownership. We have already spent a lot of time and energy planning the move and all of this is happening just 2/3 weeks from the move-in. I have a demand job that requires a lot of cognitive focus, and I feel like I am spending a decent chunk of my day trying to resolve the situation in addition to processing the emotional toll of having my own mother out to destroy my life. I know I have a job, a family, and my own life, and I have a good legal case, but I also feel so unsafe, violated, and confused. I can almost feel the voice in my head telling me that this is all my doing, and that I am too weak. It is like I know what I need to do cognitively but emotionally I am paralysed. Do you think what I mean? What would you do?

Saturday, May 25 - Friday, May 31, 2024

Top 60s

score	comments	title & link	mirrors
592	75 comments	[60s] Doug Ingle, Iron Butterfly Singer and Organist, Dead at 78
149	33 comments	[1969] Alice Cooper in February 1969 (by Ed Caraeff)
53	8 comments	[1968] Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida [R.I.P. Doug]	[AM] [BC] [Dzr] [SC]
44	9 comments	[1969] Chicago - Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?	[Sp] [AM] [Dzr] [SC]
14	0 comments	[60s] SMALL FACES ROLLIN OVER stereo

 

Top 70s

score	comments	title & link	mirrors
223	36 comments	[70s] I drew jimmy page
199	71 comments	[70s] The start of the 3rd Gen of Fleetwood Mac that pushed them into mega popularity and one of the best bands ever.
112	16 comments	[70s] That time Rerun tried to bootleg the Doobie Brothers
60	6 comments	[1979] The Police - Reggatta De Blanc. A great album
45	6 comments	[1974] Bad Company - Bad Company (1974)	[AM] [Dzr] [SC]

 

Top 80s

score	comments	title & link	mirrors
355	64 comments	[80s] Anybody know the original YouTube video of this? Jeff Beck losing his mind 🤯
187	85 comments	[80s] Forgive me father for I have sinned. It’s been 31 years and I’ve never listened to this full album.
66	14 comments	[1980] Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - Bad Reputation (1980)	[Sp] [AM] [Dzr] [SC]
54	13 comments	[1981] Stevie Nicks - Edge Of Seventeen (1981)	[Sp] [AM] [BC] [Dzr] [SC]
50	7 comments	[80s] Whitesnake - Still Of The Night (live at Donington 1990)	[Sp] [AM] [Dzr] [SC]

 

Top Remaining

score	comments	title & link	mirrors
361	75 comments	Breaking the what?
319	20 comments	Happy 79th Birthday to John Fogerty
198	40 comments	Out in the Backseat of my...
159	472 comments	Unexpected concert pairings: I was not expecting Bob Seger to be on the same bill as Rush, but there they were at this March 1977 show in New York. How about you? Ever been to a concert where two (or more) very unlikely classic rock acts were on the same bill?
143	17 comments	Live 1971

 

Top 5 Most Commented

score	comments	title & link	mirrors
84	279 comments	Best live songs?
48	51 comments	FavoriteTightrope? ELO, Leon Russell, Stevie Ray
19	22 comments	Station recommendations
58	18 comments	33 Years Ago Tonight: Poison with Slaughter & Bullet Boys in Atlanta / My 29th Concert / Ticket Price: 19.50
41	15 comments	The zombies

 

i am remarried mom of three kids, 18, 16, 12. my middle son is currently very angry with me, and refusing to come home after a week vacation with his dad.
context:
their dad and i divorced six years ago. i left everything, started life over quite alone and broke. it was so hard. the biggest grief was losing the kids half time. they were and are everything to me.
after a few years of healing i meet my now husband, who is nice and great. the kids love him. he list his wife to cancer young, no kids. he has character and respect of his friends and family.
two years ago, we moved the kids 15 miles away from town #1 to town #2, with legal permission from my ex and the support of the kids.
it was a disaster. my kids’ dad stopped talking to us after initially fully supporting the move, and took us to court trying to get custody and stop the move AFTER we actually moved. 🤡
the 18 months of custody dispute was horrible. worse than divorce. early on in the case, we moved BACK to our original town to show the kids how much we cared about what they wanted, which was apparently NOT moving after all. (their dad was using this to drive a wedge between us and the kids, even after we moved back, he would not drop the case against us.)
ultimately, the judge did not approve his motions and found him in contempt in some other areas. she gave us a new parenting plan that of course he is not following. custody remains at 50-50 for the boys, though my daughter has been with us full time since last august.
during this time, the kids dad also burns his house down with a cigarette, displacing the kids and racking up four more moves in a year in addition to our two for them (to the city and back.) my son's dog freezes to death after he lets him outside at his dads. he totals his car, with booze and passengers inside. he’s having major outbursts on the soccer fields and got in a fight with his one of his best friends. his dad also gets put on notice from my sons soccer club for unacceptable and hostile sideline behavior (chronic behavior)that includes kicking a ball AT a kid on the other team, ON PURPOSE, and admitting loudly it was.
so i’m seeing signs of deep distress in my son. he is a quiet kid and deep thinker, not one to talk about feelings, though we have been talking deeply for weeks…about soccer. his coaches and friends parents are telling me they are noticing he’s showing signs of too much pressure on him. they say it’s coming from his dad. so i start hunting for a strategy to get him through this time.
all the while, his dad is sneaking him around to try out for this super competitive traveling soccer team i said i wasn’t supportive of, mostly for mental health reasons. i also had him screened for adhd and took him to a therapist in the days leading up to our conflict. (maybe this was too much but im new at this too!)
so that’s the lead up. last friday we have an argument that starts about soccer, and what i see as betrayal and deceit: i said no to a traveling soccer team after my son had four weekends of volatile sportsmanship and yellow/red cards. he went to tryouts anyway with his dad and was surprised when i wasn't fully supportive.
he “sees me as an obstacle to his happiness.” that turned into … he’s still mad at the move—which i never fully explained our side. (all the parenting advice said don’t talk to the kids about court stuff, so i didn’t. you know who did? their dad.) but when i tried to share just the basics, he says im a liar and not a victim. i told him to get out (he was leaving anyway and this felt good at the time, but probably shouldnt have said it.)
he hasn’t come back. says he isn’t ready. he had a week vacation with his dad and is still there. his dad says he does NOT want james there full time. (his dad has several girlfriends currently, so that would hamper his style.)
my heart feels like it’s ripped from my chest, like our connection was completely cut. and the thing is: i SERVE that kid. i coddle him and dote on him and create memories and experiences and life lessons and all the good mama things. i’m a good mom to him. i spend so much time mothering him (directly and indirectly), probably too much at the expense of myself. i’ve felt guilty since the divorce and have always babied the boys especially. and what i get is blame and rage.
i’m hearing this is typical teenage angst, made worse by some huge traumas in his life.
i cant go back to court. there’s lots i could say my kids dad is not doing, to include mandated court coparenting counseling, but it will only make things worse. he’s a narcissist with substance abuse problems, and at least now, with this conflict, he’s finally talking to me again. so much of our trauma these last few years have come from us not talking. it’s truly like dancing with the devil, talking to him now and trying to come together for our son.
my longtime therapist said that their relationship with their dad will be marked by his mask slowly falling off and disappointing them in huge ways. my daughter went through this and i thought my son was starting to see some things … and now he’s flopped, and seems to be incredibly loyal to his dad.
(it’s not about loyalty to one parent over the other for me, it’s about healthy relationships and living in truth.)
so long, sorry. i just need a strategy for how to proceed. do i give my son the space and time he's asking for, even if he's just couch-hopping from friends house to friends house while he's there? what if he doesn’t come back? how much autonomy do i allow him and when do i stand up for what i see is best as his mom?
thanks for reading if you made it this far. looking for books or ideas, resources, advice.

My (M44) first wife “Trish” (F41) and I divorced about five years ago because she didn’t want to have sex after the birth of our kids (M14 and F16). So I found sex elsewhere. I was very discreet, but she found out after several years; then she informed me “what’s good for the gander is good for the goose” and she started seeing other people too. That was fine with me, as I was getting sex, and it gave me more freedom and less paranoia about getting caught cheating whist having sex. Trish asked for a divorce within the year, and since my girlfriend of two years, “Annie,” had been pressuring me to leave Trish, I thought it was the best outcome for everyone. Annie and I got married soon after the divorce was final, to which I agreed.
I see Trish every week when we hand off the kids, who are now teenagers, and I dread it. Not because she’s mean or rude … she is beautiful and warm and generous and funny. I recognize that she hasn’t really changed (except about the sex) since we were married. Those traits were always there, but they were buried under my resentment over the lack of sex, the nagging, the financial stress, the lack of sex, and how her mother treated me (this will be important later).
On top of all that, her career as a sex surrogate took off almost as soon as we separated, but not soon enough for me to ask for alimony. She’s now earning more by herself than our combined household income waa when we were together. Her live-in boyfriend is a well-known fiction writer with a very penis and it's well known that she gives him all the sex. They also travel to exotic locales, eat at fancy restaurants, speak foreign languages together, have regular and vigorous sex, and surround themselves with a crowd of well-known writer friends. They’re even taking the kids to London this summer while he teaches a workshop or something.
I, on the other hand, have been struggling financially and having some health issues—the recent loss of a visible tooth I can’t afford to replace hit even harder than the diabetes diagnosis—and my now-wife Annie has developed several health and tooth-related issues of her own that make her tired and irritable and affect her ability to have sex and work and take care of me and our apartment. To which Annie is now denying the sex.
I used to be mostly content with my life, even when I was married to Trish, as long as she wasn’t nagging me or refusing sex.
Her new life makes me feel terrible. I feel like in the game of divorce, I lost big. It’s eating me up. I’m resentful that we had money problems when we were together because she didn’t work very hard—she claimed she was focused on raising the kids and taking care of the house and refusing me sex. Why can't I have the same post-divorce life of money, travel and leisure and sex too that she keeps rubbing in my face?
I hate that my daughter showed me a picture of her mom beaming happiness with her boyfriend on a mountaintop in Patagonia. I hate seeing what my life has become compared to hers. I hate that I'm being refused sex.
How do I live in the life I have now, maybe even improve it, and get some sex, instead of going around and around about all the ways it could have gone differently for me?
UPDATE: To all of you saying that I need therapy: I hate the idea of therapy. I can’t really afford it right now anyway. The antidepressants my doctor prescribed don’t seem to be doing anything. I may have ADHD, who fuckin knows? The diabetes makes me feel too tired to do much besides watching TV on the couch after work and on the weekends. Yes, Annie is becoming more and more like Trish was before the divorce. And refusing me sex. And finally, yes my phone has been blowing up lately. I apologize for not making that clear in the post.

TW Self harm. I don’t know how to feel because I just avoid thinking about anything during the day, at least anything from real life. I write poems and songs and journal entries in my head and listen to music and read and that helps me survive and stay away from everything that’s — real. My mom saw my self harm scars a few days ago and now is getting them removed by a plastic surgeon or smth idk. I don’t know how to feel, I don’t love the scars lmao, but I don’t think I would go through all the trouble of going through a medical procedure just to get them removed, I feel like my mom is getting them removed for her own comfort but like I already said I don’t like to think about real life too much. I know for sure my mom wouldn’t like me to be myself because I’m trans and she doesn’t know that but she does know that I’m queer and I wasn’t okay with that, I don’t know what to write or think or feel.

TW: Self-harm
Lately I (18F) have been getting worse again.
My life is supposed to be great, I'm graduating high school and my finals were good. My friends are good, I was good. But lately everything's been going wrong. It kinda started the day after my 18th birthday. We have an exchange student (16F) at ours, she's great and I like her. But her family (they're French) invited us to Paris the day after my birthday. I get that it's a big thing and I was really really grateful, my family wasn't too stoked since they're workaholics, but we managed. At first we didn't know when we would go, but then they planned on the day after my 18th birthday. I wasn't included in the conversation, I wasn't told until a month prior.
I tried to be happy, but I've kinda had a traumatic history with the French language in school and also in an aborted exchange year and so, it's a long story, but French just kinda triggers some really bad memories. Anyways, the day after my 18th birthday we had to wake up at 4 am to head to the airport. I felt like I couldn't enjoy my birthday. It was supposed to be my day. I wanted to go out with my friend (18F) but my parents said I wasn't allowed to be tired or hungover or anything. So I just kinda spent my birthday packing and in my room. And then the day first day in Paris I figured that my exchange students family was all about hard-core sightseeing. I was tired from waking up early and I drove 2 hours in the morning and couldn't get any sleep on out trip. So I was moderately grumpy, but the first day of three I kept it together. The second I kept it together until dinner where I just needed a rest. My family and the exchange students family wanted to see Sacre-cœur but I asked if I could just head to the hotel since I barely slept because I needed to share a room with my brother (20M). Long story short my dad yelled at me in the restaurant and told me things along the line of he doesn't know what went wrong with me. Good news was that I went to the hotel after to cry. Next day they acted as if nothing happened but when I said I want an apology from my dad, my mom said she had enough of me and told me the minute I get home I was supposed to pack my bags and leave, or I behave the rest of the day. That last day we went on the highest tower of France for lunch. I have a crippling fear of heights. I was sick just sitting up there, not even eating. When we got home, I think my parents forgot about kicking me out.
Since then I've been a bit worse. I wasn't bad yet, but I was exhausted all of the time. I've been diagnosed with depression, so I understand that I needed to take things slow and slowly build myself back up. Last week was my last school day and I got wasted, but I also started vaping again. Little backstory, I was addicted to them a few months back and 10 months clean. But yeah, that happened.
But this week, I had finals and I was exhausted. I am exhausted from having back to back exams, and my mom, the exchange student and me were supposed to watch a movie in the cinema today. But my mom is exhausted from work so she's been on edge, and most of the time, I get the short stick and she yells at. This time she yelled at my brother, so when everyone left and I helped her do the dished, I said she was being unfair to him, even though him and I are barely talking and we agreed on no contact as soon as someone moves out, it was unfair how she yelled at him. I tried to be civil and told her she didn't have to watch the movie with me and the exchange student, I'd handle it, and she said she wanted to and she'd just sleep during the movie. I tried to keep cool, I tried but she kept saying things that hurt so I wanted to distance myself from the situation and said I'd just go watch another movie. Then she said I should just stay home.
Then I took all my stuff into my room, all the little decorations for pride month I was really excited for, and I started crying. Then I took out a razor blade and started cutting again.
I was 2 months clean.
I didn't cut in Paris, I didn't cut at any point but today I broke and started again.
I'm now in my room, the argument happened less than half an hour ago and I think I'll stay here for today and probably tomorrow. I have like half a packet of wasabi peanuts and water. Don't know what to do now tbh.
So yeah. I relapsed on my two addictions.