Posts by MorpheuzX

35

"You're an apostate!"

by Swan in

jw
friends

what would you do in a situation like this?.

you're in a hurry, so want to just grab something quick for lunch in a nearby fast food restaurant and then eat back at your desk while you work.

there was a woman standing in front of the condiments area.

MorpheuzX

I would have politely recommended she get some prozac and left.

135

Victory for Terrorism

by Yerusalyim in

the terrorists won a great victory in spain.

mind you, i'm all for the democratic process...it's great...and had the spanish decided to part ways with the us of it's own volition, great!...however, the socialists were project to not win a majority in this weekends election...that is until the terrorist attack.

now, with the socialist coming into power...and the promise to both withdraw the 1300 spanish soldiers from iraq and to part ways with the us on foriegn policy we can look for more such attacks in other countries.

MorpheuzX

Avishai, I personally think your comment was disgusting, especially coming from you. Have some dignity.

There seems to be this idea out there that democrats, liberals, whatever you want to label them, are cowardly -- just because they don't believe in doing the shoot first and ask questions later thing. And let me remind you it was a conservative President Bush who dared Al-Queda to on July 2, 2003 to, "Bring them on!" Since Bush's dare, 358 US boys have been killed in Iraq.

In case some of you don't know or don't care, according to Centcom, the current official body count of the Iraq invasion is 564 US dead, 59 UK dead, 11 Spainish dead. The total number of dead soldiers is 665, including boys from Italy, Poland, Bulgaria. The number of US soldiers wounded is 2,814. The total number of soldiers wounded is 3,241. What's the Iraqi body count? Well nobody bothered to keep those numbers.

And yet as even people like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, George Tenet and Colin Powell have admitted, in retrospect, there were no WMD in Iraq and there was no connection between 9/11 and the Iraqi government.

Let me make this perfectly clear: YOU DO NOT KNOW WHO CARRIED OUT THE ATTACKS IN SPAIN! And yet a lot of people's response is let's send more troops and go kill some Iraqis. Or let's blame it on Al-Queda, even if there's no proof. Right now nobody knows if it was Salafia Jihadia, Al-Queda or the Basque separatist ETA. All we know is the Spanish government has arrested five Moroccans.

Most of the responses I see on this thread remind me of the first reaction of a scared person -- lash out in anger. Or the reaction of a cornered animal -- attack!

Let me further ask this question, how many of you big, brave, tough guys out there that are so gung ho to send more troops and "kill those bastards" have ever served in the military? Do any of you have any combat experience? Have any of you actually had to kill somebody? How about we give you a rucksack and an M-16 and ship you off to Iraq, sound fun? Or is all your big just talk carried out by the blood and sacrifice of others?

15

Baseball!!!

by logansrun in

ahh, spring is in the air!

the newly unveiled grass freed from it's snowy blanket.

the first buds of leaves barely containing their excitement at the beaconing of all the birds of heaven.

MorpheuzX

I don't know. I think some of you must be half nuts. The Tigers are obviously going to win the Series! They added Jason Johnson to a rotation that already included Mike Maroth, Jeremy Bonderman and Nate Cornejo. Now I realize that those pitchers finished last season a combined 31-67; I'm sure they'll be much better this year. Plus they went out and signed Pudge Rodriguez to be the new backstop for the bargain basement price of 40 million USD -- for a catcher whose played one full season in the last four. Good idea.

Jeepers, it must totally suck to be a Tigers fan!

Actually I think I concur with just about everyone else, Cubs vs. Red Sox in October 2004.

Even with all the money the Yankees spent in the off-season, I think too many of their key players are too old and prone to injury: Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Bernie Williams, Kevin Brown. In addition to that it appears that Jon Lieber, the Yank's reclamation project in their rotation has broken down again, meaning Donovan Osbourne is now the number five starter! (That's right the same Donovan Osbourne who last started for the St. Louis Cardinals back in 1993 or something.)

With a few more injuries, this might be the year the evil empire collapses. The Sox have so much more depth than the Yanks. And the Cubbies are just going to be smoking teams this year.

My pick for the series, Cubs in six.

As a post-script: I'm sure my Phils will find a way to lose again.

135

Victory for Terrorism

by Yerusalyim in

the terrorists won a great victory in spain.

mind you, i'm all for the democratic process...it's great...and had the spanish decided to part ways with the us of it's own volition, great!...however, the socialists were project to not win a majority in this weekends election...that is until the terrorist attack.

now, with the socialist coming into power...and the promise to both withdraw the 1300 spanish soldiers from iraq and to part ways with the us on foriegn policy we can look for more such attacks in other countries.

MorpheuzX

Yeru, in Spain they have this thing called DEMOCRACY. Here let me define it for you:

Main Entry: de·moc·ra·cy
Pronunciation: di-'mä-kr&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
Etymology: Middle French democratie, from Late Latin democratia, from Greek dEmokratia, from dEmos + -kratia -cracy
1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2 : a political unit that has a democratic government
3 capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the U.S.
4 : the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
5 : the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

The people of Spain are free to pick their own leaders, based on their own ideas about the direction of their government, without regard for your farcical assumption that this is a victory for terrorism. Obviously if the Spanish people thought Jose Maria Aznar was doing an acceptable job as prime minister he'd still have the job; instead they've installed Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in the post.

I can only hope that our country has a similar "regime change" this fall.

11

Anybody watch the Sopranos?

by MorpheuzX in

this is totally unrelated to jwism, but does anybody here watch the sopranos?

apparently 12 million households tuned in for their season premiere last sunday night.

who's getting whacked?

MorpheuzX

My thoughts on tonight's episode:

Ok so Carmine is officially dead. Johnny Sack is non-officially the boss of NY. Carmine Jr. wants in but isn't going to have the muscle to get himself anything but whacked.

Adriana is drinking her self into oblivion; tonight's Judas' hanging himself remark might forebod her suicide later in the season.

Meanwhile the FBI closes the noose on Tony without him even knowing it. And Coronado Soprano, getting more and more senile is about to lose it.

And from the preview from next week it looks like Robert Loggia's character is starting to move in on Paulie Walnuts' sports book territory -- a show down in the making.

35

Where's your favourite place to be ?

by reboot in

jw
friends

where do you feel most 'at home' within yourself?

do you have a special affinity with a particular place?

if i feel stressed or low i always head for the beach.i've got a very special beach near me thats empty.

MorpheuzX

Point Loma (San Diego), California in the evening with a nice breeze blowing in off the Pacific -- grilling up a few steaks and veggies, and baking a few potatoes in tin foil on the grill, while sipping a brew or two or a Seagram's in 7UP with my big brother Paul and his wife Sherrie. Meanwhile, their little munchkin is perpetually running around showing "uncle Jerry" his latest Lego construction. For his birthday I bought him the Space Shuttle Columbia Lego set; I haven't been back out to California yet to see him show it to me.

After this summer, when I finish up my undergraduate education in dreadful Pennsylvania, I'll be heading out to California for good, or at least for graduate school and hopefully my Ph.D. track.

19

DO YOU FIND.......................

by Dansk in

jw
friends

that you are reading a lot more since exiting the borg?.

i've had as many as five books on the go all at once - all of a spiritual nature.

i'm currently reading the wheel of life and death by philip kapleau.. claire takes a book to bed with her every night (something i can't do - i just can't read in bed).. some of you might like fiction or biographies, etc., but i love to read anything on buddhism (although one of my books is by a christian cleric).

MorpheuzX

After I left the WTS I stopped reading religious materials completely. I made a slight switch into philosophy. I believe the first two books I read after leaving the WTS were Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols and Beyond Good and Evil. That lead me into reading a very wide range of seemingly unrelated philosophers, anyone from Sun Tzu(The Art of War), to Thomas More(Utopia), to Machiavelli(The Prince), to Plato(The Republic), to Lao Tzu(Tao Te Ching) to Noam Chomsky(Necessary Illusions). I was trying to find anything to help me better understand the world and in a way those books all did.

Later in college I had to do a systematic study of philosophy all the way from the ancients like Heraclites and Anaxagoras to the more contemporary like Jean-Paul Sartre, Peter Singer, and John Rawls. And let me just digress and say that after all that I once almost embraced existentialism and totally abhor utilitarian philosophy.

After I got all of that philosophy junk out of my system I read virtually ever single book published by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Irvine Welsh, Thomas Harris, Stephen King, Albert Camus and a load of books by Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, Jean Genet, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn -- a diverse group, but all worth reading.

I also own and have read nearly the entire poetic works of William Shakespeare (wrote some fantastic sonnets), Silvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Frost.

These days I find myself reading less books and print, in general. I find myself much more interested in reading the content of The Economist, the NYT, and the Washington Post. In fact, I'm only reading one book at the present and it is a laughable work written by Rick Warren. It's a book for the Christian fundamentalist out there, wrought with contrived emotionalism ? you know the whole, "Jesus loves you so much" gibberish. I'm about half way through it and I'm not sure if my stomach is going to allow me to finish.

So, I guess I read more.

19

The Cross

by moses in

jw
friends

does anyone out there now wear a cross or would you still feel guilty wearing one?

MorpheuzX

A cross was one of the first things I bought after I left the witnesses; no I've never felt even a tinge of guilt about it. The whole issue of cross or beam always seemed a tad asinine to me.

(I mean unless a couple AP photographers invented a time machine, traveled back in time and snapped a couple of pictures, how would anyone actually know for sure? And I'm pretty sure I would have noticed that on CNN.)

Adherence to the anti-cross dogma was just another control mechanism the cult used to control us by separating us from mainstream Christianity and society.

Oh and by way if digression, I too love the Beatles, especially the first and second anthology. I think it's in the beginning of the second anthology that has three or four tracks of just John singing Strawberry Field Forever -- amazing.

60

PASSION of the Christ

by myownsaviorthankyoumuch in

wondering if anyone has seen it yet, and what the general consensus was around here.

i saw it a week ago this coming monday, overall i liked it, and didnt really see what the controvesy was, thought that the aramaic w/ english subtitles was a nice touch, cinematography was great, watching mary's griefmoved me a whole lot more than watching jesus get tortured, satan rocked visually, i especially enjoyed the fact that he was portrayed by a female, [that was not a comment to instigate the femenists on the board] though he had one too many hollywood moments, i really like the fact that jesus actually came across as arrogant, not the weakling he is always portrayed as during the easter season, he actually had some nads, and had something to say, that was cool, made him a lot more real in my eyes, after walking out of the theater though, i could only keep thinking to myself this was such a tragedy in the likes of homer, a hero bound for disaster, a legend told through the centuries, much like king arthur became a legend based on the events of a real man, im thinking the same must have happened with him, 80 flogs with bamboo into it i was thinking endorphines and adrenaline, yet it kept going into a second round, how he was able to walk after that and carry a cross, seemed a bit ludicrous, comments??

?

MorpheuzX

I've seen the movie three times now and it's great MOVIE. I don't care if it's perceived to be anti-Semitic or anti-Italian or somewhat lacking in authenticity. I can tell you it's an excellent piece of film work. The cast is wonderful; the acting is superb. It's a drama so it's is fraught with highly emotional scenes. The cinematography might be the best part of the movie. The one main problem I had with the movie is that it had an overpowering musical score. Personally I think the movie would have been much better without the score. (Could you imagine the Omaha beach scene in 'Saving Private Ryan' with sweeping orchestra music in the background?)

I have to reiterate I'm not a Christian. But that was an excellent drama, on par with anything Shakespeare wrote. I think maybe non-Christian viewers can appreciate the movie better than Christians can, as one of my friends, a Christian, cried her eyes out the whole time, essentially missing the whole movie.

14

Dish Network v. Direct TV

by CountryGuy in

due to cable rates going up, again, we have decided on getting a dish.

my mother in law has direct tv and a friend has dish network.

they appear very similar to me.

MorpheuzX

DON"T DO IT!!!! EchoStar (Dish TV) is awful. You have to pay extra for local channels. You have to get two dishes just for local and national channels. The interactive software that comes loaded on the terminal is terrible. The guide function is super slow and sometimes takes entire minutes to download. Usually you can't check what's on even more than two hours in advance.

I have three boxes (terminals) in my house and every single one of them has malfunctioned and needed to be replaced, in less than one year!

Plus we just lost MTV, Nick, Comedy Central and a bunch of other channels for days because of some contractual disagreement between DISH and Viacom. I've had Dish for almost a year now and I'm opting out of it as soon as my one-year contract is up. Do yourself a huge favor and don't get Dish TV as it totally stinks.

I'd rate it at one star out of five.