Posts by lisaBObeesa

20

So this is why they call it a "wetsuit?"

by riz in

jw
friends

Long Beach International

by why144000 in

jw
friends

who is standing out the front of the international convention at long beach?

anyone here?

i think the message is too crowded and should be simplier.

lisaBObeesa

I think the message is too crowded and should be simplier.

I don't know who it is, but do tell us more about their message!

54

Quesions about Jehovah

by the real truth in

i am not writing these quetions to offend anyone, i am just seeking honest answers.

will you jehovah's witnesses help me in finding answers?

there is only 1 god.

lisaBObeesa

I know others on this thread have said this, but I thought I would mention it again...

I'm gonna ask this question one more time for the Jehovah's Witnesses. Is Jesus a true God or a false God?

There are almost NO Jehovah's Witnesses on this site! We are mostly all FORMER Jehovah's Witnesses.

If you want to ask Jehovahs Witnesses this question, you must go to a site where there are some Jehovah's Witnesses.

Again, almost NO Jehovah's Witnesses here! Lots of EX-Jehovah's Witness.

Your friend and ex-JW ,

-LisaBObeesa

139

WTS Addresses Child Abuse - er, kind of...

by iiz2cool in

my wife, who is intent on re-activating herself as a dub since i da'd myself, went to the convention this past weekend.

she showed me this new publication entitled "learn from the great teacher", and placed great emphasis on these two pages i scanned and am posting.

it makes a poor show of telling children what to do when confronted by a child abuser.

I have an appointment next week to show these pages to a therapist who works with many abused children. She said she would be glad to review the pages for me and let me know if they are harmful or not.

I will report back.

-Lisa

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?.

lisaBObeesa

I addressed the whole adult readers of Harry Potter thing..I said I think adults read it for fun.

And what about the couple paragraphs I wrote that starts with, "HOWEVER..."? Why no response to that?

You've misunderstood a great deal of what I've said.

I don't think so, but maybe I have. I really think I understand what you are saying. I just don't agree with it. (It could happen, you know.)

You've conveniently skipped entire paragraphs I've written in which I expressed uncertainty and characterized my remarks as speculative.

Didn't I say, "Ambivilant. Got it." or some such thing? I got it that you are ambivilant, ok?

Well, this has been great fun in a really dysfunctional sort of way!

Relax and Peace Out!

-Lisa

23

A reality check for JW's and ex-JWs...

by logansrun in

jw
friends

i'm currently taking a course in cultural anthropology to fulfill a college requirement and thought i'd share something from one of the textbooks we are using.

in the book, "extraordinary groups -- an examination of unconventional lifestyles" ethnographer william w. zellner relates his findings when he spent some time studying the jehovah's witnesses.

he relates of an experience he had when attending a convention: .

lisaBObeesa

Thanks for the Interesting post!

JWs do think they are the center of the world. It is part of their identity.

I took a cultural anthropolgy course not long ago and I learned a lot. I don't know about you, but I couldn't wait to go to that class each day! That class really changed me and opened my mind.

I even did a term paper on "Jehovah's Witness sub-culture: The Value of Unity". Got an A :)

-LisaBObeesa

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?.

lisaBObeesa

Sheila, it seems you don't read carefully. I was talking about the activities of Oprah's book club, the swinging camera shots of her audience, which consists mostly of women about your age, waving the books over their heads, thrilling to the hype of ... Steinbeck?

Why not thrilling to Steinbeck? It doesn’t seem stange to me, Steinbeck is great! It seems strange that in our society a bunch of people reading him seems strange!

This is a curious cultural phenomenon. I'm not content to say "all reading is good" and complacently leave it at that.

Ok. I don’t know why, but that’s ok.

Anyway, that phenomenon is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about your teenage years. I'm not talking about your daughter. I never said that only middle-aged women read Steinbeck.

I am talking about the intersection of commerce and art. And one the one hand, Sheila, I agree with you. I want to live in a world where people read literature. And when millions of people are reading Steinbeck, that's good.

Ok, got it: intersection of commerce and art. You like that people read and that lots of people are reading Steinbeck.

On the other hand, I don't want to live in a world where a single media mogul can so pervasively influence literary trends, nor in a world where an entire demographic does what one person tells it to do.

That is a scary reality.

HOWEVER, if that is what you are really worried about (not literary elitism), it seems silly to worry about Oprah compared to the REAL power brokers out there who control such large portions of America’s media today that they ‘pervasively influence literary trends’ AND political trends, AND economic trends, AND moral trends etc! And they are not just influencing one demographic! Not only that, thanks to the FCC, these same people will now own even GREATER amounts of the media and have even greater influence because of the new change in the law. Now that is something to worry about.

Hell, The Disney Corp scares the crap out of me. Those guys make Oprah look like nothing. And talk about homogenizing and mass marketing literature and art! Look at what they did to The Hunchback of Notre Dame! These guys are criminal!

And you are worried about Oprah having too much influence? She just has one show, a web site, a few books and a charity organization.

I also don't want to live in a world where art is bowdlerized in shallow TV "discussions" ("It's a page turner!"; "It's like a movie!")

I understand that since you are such an intellectual, these ‘shallow’ discussions are at times tedious for you. Obviously the show is not for people as ‘deep’ as you.

Untill you can live in a world where everyone is as smart as you, you will have to put up with these things. I am sure Jehovah will take care of that in the new system!

with merchandise tie-ins (even if this raises money for charity, there's still something creepy about it, and it's that "something" I'm trying to understand).

I’m trying to understand, too.

I have similar reservations about Harry Potter. It's a franchise, but is it literature?

Yes, it is literature. Children’s literature.

Harold Bloom, portentous/pretentious ass that he is, might be asking the right questions. Are people reading for the right reasons?

Do tell: what are the wrong reasons for reading a novel? And who decides that?

Are they even reading for the reasons they think they're reading?

Well, since they are mostly ‘shallow’ people, probably not. Poor dears. I'm sure you know their motivations.

On the other hand, I've been to my share of graduate seminars, and I've seen great books disemboweled by the harsh scalpel of theory, in the hallowed name of "criticism." And I felt that was a disservice to art as well. Academia, with its descent into the exceedingly esoteric world of theory, isn't always doing what it should with literature, and in the wake of that failure, perhaps an Oprah-messiah is needed?

I think she obviously was a positive for just for getting people to read books again.

(Oh, and what is with all this religious language? ‘Oprah messiah’? Humm…perhaps my theory in my post above was correct!!)

Anyway, if you can stay in the context of these remarks, Sheila, you might have something useful to say in this discussion. I'd love for you to disagree with me, but I'd prefer the disagreement to be relevant.

How condicending and rude.

As you can (or can't, or won't) see, I'm not 100% against what Oprah's doing. I recognize that she may be filling a void. I'm obviously ambivalent about it, though.

Ambivalent. Got it.

Interesting comment, and it provokes a question: Do kids read these books because all of the merchandising compels them to

YES

,

or does the merchandising exist because the kids love to read these books

YES

(and not other books)?

No. Harry Potter just opened the door for my son. Now he is into other science fiction/space type books.

However, my complaint has been less about the way kids read these books, more about the way (some) adults read them.

As for the adults: I dunno. I read the first book and I liked it fine, but I don’t really care to go out and read the rest. So I can’t speak for those adults who you are talking about. I do know that people read lots of different things for different reasons. I don't think adults read Harry Potter for good enough reasons for you. I think they read it for fun.

As for encouraging people to read, the distinction has to be made that she encourages people to read the books she herself selects and endorses

What do you expect her to encourage people to read? Books she doesn’t select and doesn’t endorse?

I doubt that many of Oprah's viewers read without her at their side. This brush with celebrity -- the thrill of reading what Oprah has written and understanding it more or less as she has -- is the draw, more so than the literature itself.

Wow you can read the minds of all those people. Wow.

You have called the people who read books on Oprah’s book list middle-aged, Oprah-messiah followers who engage in shallow discussions of literature just so they can brush with Oprah’s celebrity. You say they would not read if Oprah didn’t tell them to. None of these statements have any basis in objective fact. You lump a great deal of people into one group. You have a bias. You have a prejudice. You are stereotyping, just as Sheila said you were. It is really annoying.

Or so I'd argue.

Yes, you do argue! So do I. (JW hang-over.)

And finally, Dedalus, you were incredibly rude to Shiela in that last post and were a real ….(no name calling allowed on this board, but you know what you were).

I'm sure you were just not thinking when you posted like that.

-LisaBObeesa

139

WTS Addresses Child Abuse - er, kind of...

by iiz2cool in

my wife, who is intent on re-activating herself as a dub since i da'd myself, went to the convention this past weekend.

she showed me this new publication entitled "learn from the great teacher", and placed great emphasis on these two pages i scanned and am posting.

it makes a poor show of telling children what to do when confronted by a child abuser.

lisaBObeesa

Welcome, reaper!

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?.

lisaBObeesa

Parenthetically: If it helps, if it matters, if you're interested, here's my online book list at Amazon.com

Your book list makes me want to read.

Or, I may be one of those guys -- snobs, whatever -- for whom the reading and writing of fiction is so important, I become frustrated when literature is treated with anything less than religious reverence.

I said I could be wrong..

Now, if it's silly, you have to let me make fun of it! (Rubbing hands together, cackling evilly)

I am sure that no matter what, you will find a way to make fun of it. But I am impressed you signed up and are going to re-read it! I think I will read the book, too.

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?.

lisaBObeesa

Ok, I wasn't gonna, but here goes my 2 cents again:

Dedalus:

All I could find in that big long post of yours is that you don't like it because it is popular: A lot of people read the books Oprah recommends. In fact, more than a lot of people read the books Oprah recommends.

My point is that THAT, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. I think (but I can’t read your mind here), that it just gives you the creeps because it reminds you of your past: A lot of people, unfortunately, read what the WBTS recommends.

Again, I could be wrong here. It could be that you just don’t like ANYTHING popular just because it is popular. Or maybe it is something else.

But, if the reason is that it reminds you too much of JW sheep, then here are my comments:

These two things are not the same. I mean, on one hand you have a bunch of people doing no thinking on their own, (reading all the same books), blindly following a group of men in Brooklyn who are lying to them and taking their money, their time and their lives.

And on the other hand you have Oprah recommending novels she likes, holding open discussions about the books, AND donating all the money to charity.

I think your reaction is a bit of posttraumatic stress.

Most of the time, that loud noise you hear is a car backfiring, not a gunshot.

Relax and read a book!

J

-LisaBObeesa

ps you said:

Is this how Oprah's book discussions generally go?

OMG what a smart a$$@! LOL! Btw, haven’t you even SEEN the discussions?

I absolutely DARE you to go ahead and read East of Eden again and watch the Oprah program with the discussion. You said it was a good book, right? What, are you chicken?