IsaacJS2

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Posts by IsaacJS2

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  38

  Silly Things You Can Do For Which Jehovah Will Kill You...

  by gaiagirl in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i was thinking about all the various people who the bible says have been killed by jehovah or his angels for various acts of disobedience.

  here are a few of the ones i thought of....feel free to add your own eating a piece of fruit (slow death, 930 years) picking up some sticks on the sabbath preventing the ark of the covenant from falling when the guy carrying it stumbles living in a city where your family has lived for generations, in a region where jehovah has "given" the land to his "chosen" people dancing for your victorious warrior father, not knowing he has vowed to offer the first one out of the house as a burnt offering.

  disagreeing with moses

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  IsaacJS2

  Naughty words.

  IsaacJ
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  4

  Can anybody recommend any audio cleaning-up software to stop hissing

  by needproof in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  ?

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  IsaacJS2

  I have some experience with this. (I like Adobe Audition, but it's rather pricey) I've actually found that a lot of noise-removal software just doesn't do the trick because it often fails to isolate the sound I want removed. If your software has an equalizer, parametric equalizer, a bandpass/stop filter or a low/high pass filter, you can actually do a lot with it and get nearly perfect results with tape hiss.

  Goldwave (www.goldwave.com) has this ability. It isn't exactly free, but even the shareware version will let you perform any 100 operations you want before it starts nagging. If it starts nagging, you can restart it and the count begins anew. It is also very cheap to buy and almost as good as Audition. Especially for the price at $45. It is very powerful.

  1. Goldwave's equalizer (found under the effects/filters settings at the top) has 7 bands, or sliders. Try selecting a small portion of the audio, one with both the hiss and the sound you want to keep, and start playing with the last 2 or 3 sliders and see what that does for you. You could also try the "Reduce Treble" presetting at the bottom of the equalizer window. If you get good results, try selecting the whole recording and see if it still sounds okay.

  2. Goldwave's bandpass filter might also work. The "voice hum and hiss filter" presetting might do the job.

  3. It also has a noise reducer. This might work, but like I said, they usually just aren't precise enough.

  IsaacJ
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  21

  Bitter!!

  by Gill in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  during many of my discussions with my parents about the wt and what i feel about their book publishing company, my mother loves to hurl the word 'bitter!

  ' you're bitter!

  you're bitter because you know we're right!

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  IsaacJS2

  It does annoy me. But if I let it show, they just think they've struck a nerve of something. They take that as a sign that they are right and we really do "know" that they are "just right." I'm working on learning to shrug this crap off and to avoid asking for their approval. It just reinforces their particular form of craziness.

  IsaacJ
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  24

  Story I've been waiting to hurl everybody's way...

  by IsaacJS2 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  story time!

  this is what renewed my wt ire a little while back.. we were flooded .

  we stayed with her jw aunt .

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  IsaacJS2

  It was a freak sort of thing. Surprisingly, we don't often get major floods in many parts of Delaware, despite it being a peninsula. This is probably the moderate weather center of the world. But it rained for about 5 days straight or more that time, and it was a heavy downpour each and every day. The drainage system couldn't handle it and the exact street where I live happens to be lower than many of the rest. I have never, ever experienced anything like it.

  We did make CNN. Sadly, the Daily Show was off that week. (Figures) Would have been cool to hear our town mentioned by Jon Stewart.

  FEMA came by and did nothing at all except poke around. But our trailer is a few inches higher than everyone else's, so our floor didn't get wet. I guess this is why we were "blessed," according to my aunt-in-law. It did ruin our floor insulation, but since the trailer is old and we have (already beat up) aluminum skirting instead of vinyl, we didn't have to replace that right away. I would really like to live somewhere else with or without the flooding at this point. Luckily, this was a mild winter so our pipes didn't freeze.

  It took nearly a week to get our power back. I found out we could have moved in sooner because the power company had repaired their end of things, but the breaker outside had been tripped and the new management here had to throw the switch. If not for that, we could have gotten home days sooner than we did. Probably the very day my AIL got all presumptuousarrogantrighteousignorantstupidassinine "Witnessy" on me.

  At least that part of it is over with, now.

  IsaacJ
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  24

  Story I've been waiting to hurl everybody's way...

  by IsaacJS2 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  story time!

  this is what renewed my wt ire a little while back.. we were flooded .

  we stayed with her jw aunt .

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  IsaacJS2

  Maybe I should start a new thread for alternate replies. I could let everyone join in the healing? I guess I'd have to find a picture of the flyer's cover and post it, though, to be sure everyone knew which one I meant. (Even though they keep remaking it every other year) Wonder if my wife has lost her's already?

  My Aunt-in-law again, as she points at the picture of various ethnicities wondering gayly through a post-Armageddon forest: "Would like to be here?"

  1. "Nah, I'd never get the grass stains out of my home made shoes."

  2. "What is this supposed to be--an Easter Egg Hunt? In the New System?!? What the @%!!!" (Well it does look like one you know!)

  3. "Doing what? Wandering through a forest? Wouldn't I be too busying digging 6 billion graves thanks to Jehovah's 'mercy' instead?" (Yeah, this one kinda stings)

  4. "But I am in this picture. This is where they buried me after Armageddon. They're laughing on my grave." (This one stings, too)

  5. "But I'm already in this picture. I'm the one taking a crap behind that tree. See? I'm waving at you with my free hand." (Will I still be allergic to poison ivy in the New System? Aww man, I hate wipin'! Somebody better reinvent toilet paper soon)

  6. "Sure. I'll do it the same way the writer's did it: with Photoshop, of course. Wait--you actually thought this was a real picture from the future?!? Ha ha ha ha! Well, maybe you'll be smarter in the New System." (Dare to dream)

  7. "First things first. What I want to know is, 'Who's gonna cut all that grass that's growing worldwide?' Well don't look at me!"

  8. "Wait. Shouldn't Jesus be in the picture already? Ohhh..." (For the Christians)

  9. "Depends on which OS they're using: Linux, OSX, or Vista." (Shivers) (Apologies to anyone that hates computer geek humor)

  10. "I don't know. Would you like to kiss this?" (Slap my own @$$)
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  24

  Story I've been waiting to hurl everybody's way...

  by IsaacJS2 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  story time!

  this is what renewed my wt ire a little while back.. we were flooded .

  we stayed with her jw aunt .

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  IsaacJS2

  Possible alternate universe version:

  Her: "Would you like to be here?"

  Me: "Nah. I couldn't live in a world without porn."

  'nuff said.

  (Maybe that would have ended the "conversation" a little bit sooner)

  IsaacJ
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  24

  Story I've been waiting to hurl everybody's way...

  by IsaacJS2 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  story time!

  this is what renewed my wt ire a little while back.. we were flooded .

  we stayed with her jw aunt .

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  IsaacJS2

  Greendawn:

  I wonder why they still haven't realised that the WTS is taking them for a ride and they still go on about the end coming soon. The dubs have been hearing that for something like a century. And their obsession about "bad associations", another set of dubby buzz expressions, why do they want to be so isolated from the rest of the world?

  You probably already know what I'll say to this. The psychology of how they control people is pretty sad and sick, but I'm sort of intrigued by it. Same as slowing down when you see a car wreck across the street or whatever.

  Repetition works. I remember our old PO telling me that, and he was right. If you grew up in it like she did, it's hard to break the thought patterns their techniques lay down.

  IsaacJ
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  24

  Story I've been waiting to hurl everybody's way...

  by IsaacJS2 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  story time!

  this is what renewed my wt ire a little while back.. we were flooded .

  we stayed with her jw aunt .

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  IsaacJS2

  This is the Jw 'catch all' I think. They don't even have to know why you left - because they always assume you left over poor treatment, don't they?
  Proves two things to me;
  1 - They know they are not showing love like Jesus stated they would, and know it actually does drive alot of people to reexamine and go.2- They prefer a door-to-door conversation-stopper in this, as in everything else. The wider the generalization, the easier to point to the wrong being with the one who left - after all this one always get's the cap, 'Even the brother's are imperfect you know.' Therefore it is always wrong to leave over that. You become the willing victim, and they get justified in staying away from you due to the poor influence you will have.
  Jeff

  Jeff, I think #1 up there is especially good. I've noted how some of their behavior's are practically a confession of a problem, but I don't think I had made that exact connection before. I may use this the next time I update my essay. You notice how the WTS likes to pick on the Catholic Church for obeying the Pope? To me, the GB is just a clever variation on that basic principle. (No intended offense to Catholics, BTW, just reversing a WT comparison back on itself) The Society's teaching the dubs that their understanding of "The Truth" is imperfect and always improving means they can change their minds whenever they want. The Pope can't do that so easily.

  Ditto to AuldSoul's comment, too. Lying or witholding would have made me a better associate than being straight with her. I really told her very little about my beliefs, only what I mentioned in my retelling. I refused to answer anything else. Since then, the idea of how to deal with people like her in an effective way has occupied has got me thinking. They deliberately misinterpret every little thing and twist it into a sign of reassurance. One of the articles I'm writing for About.com deals with that, but I wouldn't have come up with an answer unless I'd dealt with this.

  I try not to regret my time as a WT-slave too much. There were some benefits, even if they only came in the aftermath of it all.

  IsaacJ
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  24

  Story I've been waiting to hurl everybody's way...

  by IsaacJS2 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  story time!

  this is what renewed my wt ire a little while back.. we were flooded .

  we stayed with her jw aunt .

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  IsaacJS2

  Story time! This is what renewed my WT ire a little while back.

  We were flooded out here last summer. We had just bought a car and everything, and it was totally immersed in water. We had also lost both of our jobs. So guess where my wife and I ended up?

  We stayed with her JW aunt and uncle for nearly a week. Her aunt swore that we'd been "blessed" by Jehovah because it could have been worse. Like, huh?!? I really detest this kind of reasoning. If a forcefield had slammed down around my pitiful little shack, protecting me from the flood, then maybe. But this...? Coo-coo, coo-coo...

  Any way, she burned me real, REAL bad while I was there. My wife is still a WT slave, BTW.

  For the 1st 3 days, her aunt kept telling me out of the blue that "Armageddon's comin' ya know." Just like that. Out of no where, over and over like clockwork every half hour. No matter what was happening or what we were talking about, she'd pop up with, "Ya know, Armageddon's a comin!" I finally just used her to set my watch by. (She keeps good time!) It was so unreal. She was obviously expecting me to take the bait and I refused, which drove her crazy. I could smell the steam. But we were staying in her home where she had all the power. My wife, who was probably cheering for her, was no help at all.

  By the 4th morning, she decides she can't hold back any more. She probably had a red cape and a huge J-W embroidered on her chest under that shirt she was wearing. (She loves to sew, you know) Thing is, I had also determined not to let one more 30-min alarm go by without explaining to her why she should shut her fat gob. So I come downstairs, and just like that...

  ...it starts.

  She gets up and shows me the flyer for the convention they came from recently. It's another one of those annoying pictures they so love, the one with a bunch of multi-cultural people wandering aimlessly through a forest and smiling for no reason? (What the heck are they doing out there, any way? Are people just gonna screw off in the New System and collect lightning bugs, or what?) She points to an open spot in the picture and says, with tears in her eyes: "Would you like to be here?"

  That's her opening salvo.

  I respond: "No. I suburn easily and I'm allergic to bug bites." Yes, that's what I really said.

  And so the stage was set. I explained to her that I'm an atheist, that all religions are false to me, and that I want us to stay friends. So don't go there again, evil lady. But she keeps pressing the issue and ignoring everything I say, making the usual inane assertions. Basically treating me like a Dub-in-denial. TM After I told her repeatedly to knock it off, she ends with: "You know it isn't fair to blame Jehovah for how others mistreated you in the past."

  I couldn't believe it. Unreal. She had promised not to hold the conversation against me if I opened up. Guess she was going to set me straight, just like that. Magic, you know? Then, at the next meeting, she said something to my wife about it. When my wife asked about having her son come over some time to visit, she tells her: "I don't think that can happen. If your husband is really an atheist, then he's a bad associate."

  So much for not holding it against me...

  Liaarr!

  Grrrrrr!

  IsaacJ
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  7

  Creationists, take heart!

  by Nathan Natas in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  .

  note the 7 days -- i think those are each 7,00 years long....

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  IsaacJS2

  So if evolution goes out of business, I guess you guys will just assume that biblical creationism is the only other answer. For shame.

  They don't even have a franchise yet! Much less a retail chain.

  IsaacJ