Bravo, Richie. Like many have noted, the real conquest here is that you know yourself and are making your decisions with your eyes wide open. You've got a lot on the ball, young man.
Jankyn
Jankyn
JoinedPosts by Jankyn
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47
Here's why...
by RichieRich ini recieve many pms, emails, and more recently, many thread replies which ask me a simple question.. why are you disassociating yourself?
why not just fade?.
well, here's why.. my mother, and her mother, are in the "truth".
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23
Do Black people have a monopoly on rhythm?
by LDH inok i will admit to creating a horrible thread title just to get you to look!
of course black people don't have a monopoly on rhythm.
i just wanted to brag (a little late but still) that my daughter's high school won the percussion high honors trophy at western band championships in november in long beach.
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Jankyn
Yeah, Lisa, way to use a provocative post title to get us to oooh and ahhh over your offspring! She's a real winner.
Gosh, it's so nice to see a kid using her talent and having fun. I don't even want to tarnish the joyful smile by imagining her in frumpy clothing going door-to-door weighted down with a book bag. Arrgh!
*Happy thoughts, happy thoughts*
As for the question posed in the post: No, I don't think Black people have a monopoly on rhythm. I know some African American JWs who can neither sing nor dance. I think people with free souls have better rhythm, though, because they're more in tune with joy. Heaven knows I dance better know that I'm a free spirit! (Of course, that's not saying much. Better than bad is still not great. )
Great kid, Lisa.
Jankyn
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41
More 'great' statements from the MySpace JW forum....
by TallTexan inim getting a bit sick of it of late to be honest.
i hardly know anyone that has come into the truth from witnessing recently and i certainly never get any biblestudies.
i guess the internet is doing it's job...... this myspace forum is a sickening, twisted picture of the still-disillusioned - it's great.
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Jankyn
Okay, I can't let this go:About 6 youths in the truth were planning to attend Yale.
The entrance requirements for Yale are incredibly competitive. Unless you're a genius, an athlete, a legacy or coming through one of their "feeder" prep schools, you just don't "get in" out of the blue. The idea that six random JW kids would all get in is preposterous, mostly because they won't have taken the demanding academic courses they need. And the Yale admissions board is not going to be impressed by application essays that are all about pioneering and handling microphones at meetings!
That's one urban myth that was obviously pulled right out of someone's a$$.
Jankyn
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58
The Unkindest Cut: Hateful Words from JWs that Show Their True Colours
by Scully ini decided to start this topic when ozziepost shared the experience of a bethel representative telling him and mrs. ozzie "and don't forget, we've got your children!
it's important for us to hear these experiences and to share them with each other.
it helps us tear down the mistaken beliefs that the incidents that happen to us are not isolated ones, but are in fact par for the course when one parts ways with the jws and wts.
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Jankyn
It's insane that someone would suggest Scully's children would be better off dead than non-Jehovah's Witnesses. But strangely enough, it was hearing that insanity that helped me break free.
When I came out to my mother--after not having set foot in a Kingdom Hall for two years and never having been baptized, this is what she said:
"It would have been better if you'd never been born. If I'd known you were going to turn against Jehovah like this, I would have smothered you in your crib."
I agree, Scully. Sometimes it take something that crazy to help us wake up and leave. Still hurts, though.
Jankyn
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40
A New Trend for JW Baby Boomers?
by NYCkid ini'm sure this topic has come up before but i'm new here :-) since many of us are offspring of the baby boomer generation or of a generation earlier, i've noticed a trend.
my parents and their siblings who largely grew up as witnesses are now entering or have entered retirement age.
although my parents were generally hard working and responsible people, they have little retirement savings.
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Jankyn
Okay, this is the one that really gets me riled up (well, this one and education). My parents are finally facing the fact that they did in fact grow old and ill in this system, and that they'll probably die. Like someone above mentioned, they've been selling off everything they have to make a little extra, and continuing to work part-time jobs along with SS, but it's not enough. The house is mortgaged up to the hilt (they'll probably lose it, and then what?).
But they never put the blame where it belongs. It's always "Satan" and "this wicked system of things." Aarrgh!
I help as best I can, because no matter what, they're my parents. And I can't really put all the blame on the Society, because you can't bamboozle someone who's not sitting there waiting to be bamboozled (unless of course it's a captive child).
It's just frustrating that my folks are going to die without ever having lived.
Jankyn
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13
Got braces?
by Jourles inwell i'm finally doing it.
i'm getting braces again.
back when i was quite younger, i had removable braces.
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Jankyn
I've had a severe overbite since childhood, and was supposed to get braces then (late 60s). Instead, my parents opted to have four teeth pulled to relieve the overcrowding, and "wait until after Armageddon" for Jehovah to make my teeth perfect. Yeah, right. Of course, Armageddon was supposed to come before I finished high school, so I guess it seemed like a sure thing.
The resulting drift made the overbite even worse, and I have TMJ so bad that when I laugh, eat or yawn, you can hear my jaw pop from across the room.
I have an appointment with the orthodontist for the first week in February. I've finally got dental insurance that will cover part of the cost and am making enough money to afford the rest. I'm hoping for the no-see-um kind, but don't really care at this point. I'm just hoping to get to fifty with a mouth that doesn't hurt any more.
I thought about billing my parents, but since they're in failing health with no retirement (because they were never going to get old and sick in this system), it's pretty pointless.
Jankyn, soon to have nice teeth class
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20
The appearance of the dreaded [] brackets...
by AuldSoul ini present this as a complementary thread to ldh's "eplipsis" thread: the appearance of the dreaded ellipsis [.
ozziepost already posted this one in that thread:colossians 1:16,17 they use it here to make it appear as though god created jesus first, then all other things were created through him.
they have the word "other" in brackets.
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Jankyn
Yeehaw! Keep up the good work.
Jankyn, sick of ellipses and brackets
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12
One less thing I could get df'd for!
by Deleted inwell, if exit polls are grounds to call the presidency just hours into the vote count then i can conclude that in only 3 days of quitting the tobacco habit that this it!.
7 years ago when i left the borg i started smoking cigars, as it went well with scotch, and was deliciously a naughty thing to do after 18 years in the cult(ure).
i started to inhale, as i am prone to do, and then concluded i would be better off with cigarettes.
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Jankyn
Hang in there, Deleted.I smoked my last cig on Halloween, 1988 (after almost 10 years of 2 packs a day). It's definitely been worth it, if for nothing else than seeing how much cigs cost now compared to when I quit (it was up to $1.10 a pack, which I thought was unreasonable).
Then there's the whole breathing thing. It's kinda fun.
Jankyn
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12
The appearance of the dreaded ellipsis [. . .]
by LDH intwo well known posters have made references to the wbts use of the ellipse in the publications within the past week.. what, you may ask, is an ellipsis and why should i care?.
ellipsis ( p ) pronunciation key (-lpss).
n. pl.
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Jankyn
Thanks, Lisa, for bringing this up. There may be newbies or lurkers who are just beginning to look at the literature with a critical eye, and I think it's incredibly useful to have some tools to do that sort of necessary work.
How can readrs know what to believe if they can't identify credible sources? The WTBS is like the WeSaySo Corporation from that 1990s TV show "Dinosaurs": "It's true because WE SAY SO." And of course we all know what happened to the dinosaurs.
I love talking about this stuff. I taught freshman English at two universities when I was doing my graduate work, and I would have flunked any student who attributed sources and quoted material as poorly--and as deceptively!--as the WTBS does.
The first thing I noticed as a youngster learning about writing was the use of ellipses to remove information from quotes. I was reprimanded by an English teacher for using ellipses in such a way that the meaning of the quote was altered, and it made me wonder about the excessive use of the ellipsis in the Society's publications--since that's where I'd learned it in the first place!
To this day, I'm suspicious of an ellipsis. When I see one, I go running for the "Works Cited" page to check the original source. Really good authors will put the whole quote in a note for their readers if all they're doing is cutting for length. Even the merely competent will at least have a citation that allows the reader to locate the original item for purposes of comparison.
The use of brackets in editing is generally to make references clear, and it usually needs to be done when the author has made a hash of indefinite articles and/or pronouns or to clarify the original subject of a long quote.
The problem is that the WTBS rarely if ever sources material, and so readers never know for sure where the cuts were made or what the original subject might have been. When I read their literature now, I clench my jaw with frustration. That's the single most dishonest thing they do in their writing (well, other than the outright lies): Failing to provide adequate--or any--citations for source material.
I stress when teaching that every quote must have a citation and every claim of fact must have a source. Then we spend a great deal of time on evaluating sources. Most reasonable adults know that an item's mere appearance in print or on a Web site does not guarantee its veracity--that is, unless the adult in question is one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and the item in question was printed in WTBS materials. Then of course it must be true!
And I could write a linguistics paper on the sneaky way that WTBS writers use logical fallacies (wonderfully exposed in some earlier posts) and agentless passive construction to lead a naive reader blindly along a very shaky path of reasoning. (Example: "It is a well-known fact..." Well-known by whom? or "Throughout history..." Whose history? Reported by whom?)
My mother always used to tell me, usually while lecturing me about reading too much "worldly" literature, "You can't believe everything you read, you know!" Unfortunately, she's never applied the same rules to her own reading material. Arrgh.
Jankyn, sick of ellipses and brackets.
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39
Your first talk at the Theorcatic Ministry School, do you remember it?
by JH ini do, i had to read ezekiel 9: (1-11)
and he proceeded to call out in my ears with a loud voice, saying: have those giving their attention to the city come near, each one with his weapon in his hand for bringing ruin!
there were six men coming from the direction of the upper gate that faces to the north, each one with his weapon for smashing in his hand; and there was one man in among them clothed with linen, with a secretarys inkhorn at his hips, and they proceeded to come in and stand beside the copper altar.
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Jankyn
Hee hee...LDH, that "Que Sera, Sera" story is a hoot! We had some uber-JWs who went on and on about that song being unTheocratic, but my elderette aunt loved Doris Day so much that we got to listen to it anyway.
Like you, I was onstage from about age two--in demonstrations and sisters' talks, because I could be counted on to remember my lines. Yes, if the fates were kind, I'd be an Oscar-winner by now.
But my first talk was cool. It was on "Ants," with material from the first Aid book (the skinny one that came before the big thick one and only had like three letters of the alphabet in it). I think I was about 8 or 9? can anyone remember when that book first came out? And my elderette aunt was my householder. My setting included my little brother's ant farm. How cool. I got lots of props from the congregration, and they applauded. Of course, this was before my dad was disfellowshipped (which makes me think it was 1968 and I was 8)--after that, I didn't get much in the way of positive feedback from those folks.
Jankyn, who later grew to prefer sharks to ants (see LDH's thread on preaching to school teachers)