Posts by dedalus

I turned in false time slips for almost a year before moving away. The elders pretty much knew it, and all but asked for false slips. For example, on the eve of the CO's visit, I was cornered in the coatroom by the secretary, who informed me that I'd neglected to turn in slips for the last three month. "We need these reports," he said. I understood perfectly. "Well, put me down for two hours in February -- cold month -- three in March, and, oh, seven sounds good for April, spring and all." He jotted down the numbers and went on his way.

The Organization is the Enron of counting time.

Dedalus

17

does anyone like indies?

by nowisee in

jw
friends

while the multiplex movie theaters are running "terminator 3" and the like, my husband and i seek out different fare.

three small independent movies which we recently saw are, "winged migration", about the migratory patterns of various birds -- amazing.

some species travel l2,500 miles each way from north to south poles and back again.

dedalus

Do you all think it makes one less of an intellectual if they do like the mainstream Hollywood movies instead of the more realistic indie films and documentaries?

Depends. Anyone who thinks mainstream Hollywood produces anything like "art" with regularity is intellectually suspect in my book.

Dedalus

22

Song Lyrics that "speak" to you

by Xandria in

jw
friends

how many here have heard a song that touched or shaken your soul ?.

i was listening to christina aguilera's song " i'm okay" and shivered.

except it is not my father it is my mother.

dedalus

A song that really speaks to me, that gets me right in the gut, is

Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)

by Lou Singer and Hy Zaret, 1959 (most famously performed by They Might Be Giants)

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where Hydrogen is built into Helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees

The sun is hot, the sun is not
A place where we could live
But here on Earth there'd be no life
Without the light it gives

We need its light, we need its heat
The sun light that we seek
The sun light comes from our own sun's
Atomic energy

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where Hydrogen is built into Helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees

The sun is hot...

The sun is so hot that everything on it is a gas
Aluminum, Copper, Iron, and many others

The sun is large...

If the sun were hollow, a million Earth's would fit inside
And yet, it is only a middle size star

The sun is far away...

About 93,000,000 miles away
And that's why it looks so small

But even when it's out of sight
The sun shines night and day

We need its heat, we need its light
The sun light that we seek
The sun light comes from our own sun's
Atomic energy

Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom smashing machine
The heat and light of the sun are caused by nuclear reactions between
Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Carbon, and Helium

The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where Hydrogen is built into Helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees

61

So, for all you fans of big fat books (like, say, Harry Potter) ...

by dedalus in

who among you is reading east of eden, oprah's book club selection?

(because, of course, reading is no fun unless there's a huge corporate media conglomerate backing you up ...).

is it just me, or do any of you think it's strange, almost disturbing, to see a bunch of people, almost entirely pre-or-post menopausal women, waving this book over their heads, screaming with the same sort of unbridled glee exhibited on, say, a drabby-housewife-makeover episode?.

dedalus

OK, so, I appreciate the "light" tone of this thread, and I'm greatly amused at the ribbing I've (deservedly) received over my "pre/post" blunder. However, no one has really addressed the question of my post, which went beyond the superficial "Are you reading this book?" What I want to know is, is anyone else uncomfortable about the Oprah book club, for the reasons I've briefly mentioned, which are fleshed out in the article I posted?

Probably the answer is "no."

Dedalus

90

Williams sisters

by Phil in

jw
friends

i was recently having a discussion with a jw on the extent to which the williams family are jws.

his statement was that only the mother is a jw.

papa?

dedalus

Maybe they could hide behind their "unbelieving father" when they were younger, but it's pretty obvious that they're adults now and they are behaving in a stunningly untheocratic manner (competition, calling attention to themselves, wearing 'immodest' attire on international tv, not 'buying out the opportune time from worldly pursuits', that whole 'nose ring' thing of mom's) while still allowing themselves to be portrayed as JWs.

Yes -- and this is a good thing. Their faith in God and the role of religion in their lives cannot be measured by nose rings and short tennis skirts. No doubt certain zealous Witnesses look down on them for these sorts of things, but I still don't get why certain ex-Witnesses are so hot about it.

Perhaps celebrity keeps them an arm's length from the judicial committees that would drag them in for this. Perhaps their exposure to the religion has been so scattershot that they don't quite get the sort of religion it is. Meanwhile, the tacit assumption on this thread seems to be that, because they look the way they look, they must also be immoral hypocrites (otherwise, what was the point of LDH's co-worker analogy?).

LDH, those quotes only tell me that the Williams sisters are Witnesses. We already knew that. The disparity between their public image and the strictures of their fundamentalist cult is a problem for Witnesses, maybe for them, but not for me! The most I would admit is that there is an apparent disparity. I would not therefore conclude them to be hypocrites. Rash judgment of individual character is one of the hallmarks of the religion I've abandoned.

Have you seen these girls play?

Dedalus

Edited to add: I liked this comment, which LDH didn't quote:

I don't blame the Williams themselves. If something fishy is indeed going on, it's the society who's at fault for not seeing to it that the rules apply to all equally (but then, we knew that already).

61

So, for all you fans of big fat books (like, say, Harry Potter) ...

by dedalus in

who among you is reading east of eden, oprah's book club selection?

(because, of course, reading is no fun unless there's a huge corporate media conglomerate backing you up ...).

is it just me, or do any of you think it's strange, almost disturbing, to see a bunch of people, almost entirely pre-or-post menopausal women, waving this book over their heads, screaming with the same sort of unbridled glee exhibited on, say, a drabby-housewife-makeover episode?.

dedalus

LOL @ Safe4kids. Good one!

Of course, what I meant was women who are at about that age, mid-to-late forty-somethings, I guess. But I pussy-footed around it too much (setting you up for another zinger here).

Dedalus

61

So, for all you fans of big fat books (like, say, Harry Potter) ...

by dedalus in

who among you is reading east of eden, oprah's book club selection?

(because, of course, reading is no fun unless there's a huge corporate media conglomerate backing you up ...).

is it just me, or do any of you think it's strange, almost disturbing, to see a bunch of people, almost entirely pre-or-post menopausal women, waving this book over their heads, screaming with the same sort of unbridled glee exhibited on, say, a drabby-housewife-makeover episode?.

dedalus

This article from the Kansas City Star website gets at some of the reasons this Oprah/Steinbeck thing bothers me.

Oprah book club tries to sell Steinbeck
By DOUG GEORGE
Chicago Tribune
Oprah Winfrey's book club phenomenon, shelved a year ago shortly after a flap with less-than-grateful author Jonathan Franzen, is back.
(News tip: So is a line of book-club merchandise, emblazoned with the club logo.)
Oprah once again promises to become our nation's Reader Laureate, this time leading us through literary classics of her choosing by authors such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.
First on her list is John Steinbeck's East of Eden, a professed favorite.
"It's the perfect book for the summer," Big O gushed. It's like a movie, she said. It's got everything. Love. Betrayal. Sex.
Sex!
So what could be wrong with this? Thousands of readers will come to know a good book they might otherwise not have read. And, of course, East of Eden, a best seller in its day, will come out of the experience no worse for wear.
Maybe nothing is wrong with this. Maybe taking shots at Oprah for "inviting" Steinbeck to her talk show will, in the end, be exposed as just grumpy elitism.
Or maybe something about East of Eden, repackaged in an eye-catching Oprah Edition for the occasion, is in danger of being quietly lost in what could transpire in coming shows.
Gerald Graff, a non-elitist and a professor of English and education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, takes on topics such as literature in popular culture in a new book, Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind (304 pages; Yale University Press; $29.95).
He says he's in favor of Oprah's decision to revive the club:. "Making a classic book available to a wide audience should not be seen as dumbing it down. It's called teaching," Graff says.
On the other hand, intelligent writing such as Steinbeck's ought to be approached intelligently, he says. He gets worried when he sees his own college students read a book, then get stumped when trying to discuss what questions the book raises or when trying to identify cultural debates within the story.
"We need sharper discussions about books," he says. And the level of discourse he sees on Oprah's show at times "could be a lot sharper." Oprah tends to focus on the personal feelings she derives from fiction, he says, and to treat "books as emotional vacations."
Good point.
"It's a page turner," Oprah proclaimed to a studio audience whipped into a frenzy by gift bags of free stuff.
"John Steinbeck, wherever he is in the spirit world, is very happy today," she proclaimed, showing us a previously undemonstrated talent to channel the spirit of the departed author. Apparently a spirit interested in book sales.
If Steinbeck picked that moment to shift in his grave, he'd have missed the her segue into what came next: Look at all the aforementioned book-club merchandise for sale on her Web site.
Caps. Bucket hats. T-shirts. Tote bags.
From there, the East of Eden discussion was mostly about tote bags.

Come on, now. I know some of you out there are Oprahites. Dedalus

61

So, for all you fans of big fat books (like, say, Harry Potter) ...

by dedalus in

who among you is reading east of eden, oprah's book club selection?

(because, of course, reading is no fun unless there's a huge corporate media conglomerate backing you up ...).

is it just me, or do any of you think it's strange, almost disturbing, to see a bunch of people, almost entirely pre-or-post menopausal women, waving this book over their heads, screaming with the same sort of unbridled glee exhibited on, say, a drabby-housewife-makeover episode?.

dedalus

Who among you is reading East of Eden, Oprah's book club selection? (Because, of course, reading is no fun unless there's a huge corporate media conglomerate backing you up ...)

Is it just me, or do any of you think it's strange, almost disturbing, to see a bunch of people, almost entirely pre-or-post menopausal women, waving this book over their heads, screaming with the same sort of unbridled glee exhibited on, say, a drabby-housewife-makeover episode?

How do you culturally process this?

Dedalus