Gargamel

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Posts by Gargamel

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  20

  Dodgy poetry

  by Gargamel in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  it is a stretch to call my dodgy poetry 'entertainment' but i wasn't sure where else to put it.. .

  self-fulfilling prophecy.

  precipitation.

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  Gargamel

  Sir82. Is that by the Vogons? :) Looks vaguely familiar.

  Don't want people gnawing off their arms, do we now?
  
• 
  20

  Dodgy poetry

  by Gargamel in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  it is a stretch to call my dodgy poetry 'entertainment' but i wasn't sure where else to put it.. .

  self-fulfilling prophecy.

  precipitation.

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  Gargamel

  It is a stretch to call my dodgy poetry 'entertainment' but I wasn't sure where else to put it.

  

  self-fulfilling prophecy
  

  
  

  Precipitation

  
  

  Is it true that

  if you fear,

  the world appears

  to turn its hurt

  upon your ears?

  
  

  And if misused

  from early age,

  abused by others’ rage,

  it’s bruises you exude?

  
  

  And when you dare to doubt

  they shout and scare,

  tearing at your will

  and say they ‘care’.

  
  

  But when no-one hears

  your anguished cries,

  memories languish

  in latent spaces,

  where lonely tears

  bleed upon

  tomorrow’s seedlings.
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  123

  Message from Designer Stubble to the former JWR members

  by Designer Stubble in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  message from designer stubble to the former jwr members.

  first of all i am glad to see that many of you have found your way to this great forum, facilitated by simon.

  i am sure that after the dust of the jwr shutdown has settled, you will find this to be a good new home.. i would like to apologize for the sudden closure of jwr.

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  Gargamel

  Good stuff DS. I did have suspicion of some sock puppetry going on, but could never be certain.

  My only beef was about not being able to obtain contact details for a few members - since mostly resolved thanks to here and facebook; there are a few members with whom I have common interests other than the jws. It would have been nice to be able to download a few of the more humorous images too, but I can live with that.

  At least my dodgy poetry has survived the cull as I do keep copies of things like that :)

  I won't be participating nearly as much on exJW stuff - I spend too much time on the internet generally too. I use it more for work stuff and self-education these days.

  Best wishes to you.
  
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  123

  Message from Designer Stubble to the former JWR members

  by Designer Stubble in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  message from designer stubble to the former jwr members.

  first of all i am glad to see that many of you have found your way to this great forum, facilitated by simon.

  i am sure that after the dust of the jwr shutdown has settled, you will find this to be a good new home.. i would like to apologize for the sudden closure of jwr.

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  Gargamel

  I would definitely have saved some of those mocked-up watchtower covers :)

  In the meantime (hope this works):

  
  
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  123

  Message from Designer Stubble to the former JWR members

  by Designer Stubble in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  message from designer stubble to the former jwr members.

  first of all i am glad to see that many of you have found your way to this great forum, facilitated by simon.

  i am sure that after the dust of the jwr shutdown has settled, you will find this to be a good new home.. i would like to apologize for the sudden closure of jwr.

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  Gargamel

  I used to live in East Grinstead in England, the UK centre for Scientology. The next door neighbours were Scientologists and were absolutely fine. They had one head (each) and I even did some work for the guy on one of his contracts.

  So even though I've been fairly close to it, I wouldn't know how to do a put down.
  
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  123

  Message from Designer Stubble to the former JWR members

  by Designer Stubble in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  message from designer stubble to the former jwr members.

  first of all i am glad to see that many of you have found your way to this great forum, facilitated by simon.

  i am sure that after the dust of the jwr shutdown has settled, you will find this to be a good new home.. i would like to apologize for the sudden closure of jwr.

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  Gargamel

  I want to be one of your groupies Tallulah :) Different site, same sense of humour.

  If it's OK, I would like to keep in touch. Private exchange of emails?

  Also, Palimpsest put an email address in the JWR forum. Had I known the site was about to close, I would have copied it down.

  Can anyone PM that to me please (she did post it publicly so won't be a problem)?

  
  
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  123

  Message from Designer Stubble to the former JWR members

  by Designer Stubble in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  message from designer stubble to the former jwr members.

  first of all i am glad to see that many of you have found your way to this great forum, facilitated by simon.

  i am sure that after the dust of the jwr shutdown has settled, you will find this to be a good new home.. i would like to apologize for the sudden closure of jwr.

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  Gargamel

  Not willing to sell the database sounds pretty odd to me. If he's concerned about his posts and those of his partner becoming available again, it ought to be possible to wipe those.

  Of course it's not possible to know what's going on in someone's personal life unless they discuss it - sometimes one big change brings others with it.

  Although there were many frivolous posts on there, there was also a vast storehouse of knowledge and history too. Not releasing that feels like the modern equivalent of book burning.
  
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  51

  My son is not sure about what he has been taught about the common ancestor

  by KateWild in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this week my son expressed he is agnostic as he is not sure what to believe about evolution and the common ancestor.. i thought any jw hang ups were gone.

  i told him that what they teach in school is trustworthy and he can be rest assured that there is evidence to support that the common ancestor was the real link to the evolution of humans.. he has got critical thinking skills.

  and responded with "for hundreds of years schools have been teaching things and have changed their thoughts".

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  Gargamel

  Just wanted to say that although Dawkins obviously has a major downer on religion, not all of his works are about that.

  Anyway - to the common ancestor - without overcomplicating it:

  The closer two species are genetically, the more recently their common ancestor was around. For instance, whatever species humans and gorillas split from was a lot more recent than, say, humans and horses. Presumably horses and zebras was relatively recent, though zebras acquired stripes - believed to be camouflage.

  Throughout nature there is this balance needed for survival between being prominent enough to attract a mate and being hidden enough to hide from predators. This is why some creatures change colour or form when attracting a mate - because the rest of the time they need to be camouflaged. There were even observations that some creatures that were otherwise identical, stood out a lot more in areas where there had been no predators for a while whereas in areas where there were predators, their colourings blended in better with the background.

  One of the most remarkable things I read was about the evolution of bacteria in a lab. As they are so tiny, they change form far more quickly.so it is evolution in microcosm. Unfortunately, the details of that lengthy experiment are in a Dawkins book so may be a closed door. It was a remarkable piece of research though.

  I'm so glad that you are exploring.
  
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  123

  Message from Designer Stubble to the former JWR members

  by Designer Stubble in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  message from designer stubble to the former jwr members.

  first of all i am glad to see that many of you have found your way to this great forum, facilitated by simon.

  i am sure that after the dust of the jwr shutdown has settled, you will find this to be a good new home.. i would like to apologize for the sudden closure of jwr.

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  Gargamel

  I'm still struggling to get what was so difficult about putting up a lead page saying something like:"It is with great regret blah blah that we have decided to close down JWR on [30th June] at midnight EST. This is not negotiable and there will be no discussion on this matter. Please save any information you require, take email addresses from people with whom you wish to remain in contact etc. as this site will not be avalable after that date. Other sites of interest for recovery issues are [..........]. I will not be available to answer PMs on this as I am moving on with my life. Best wishes everybody"

  I believe that everyone would have totally respected that and I'm puzzled as to why that didn't happen. I know it's only text on a screen for many of us, but there were a few people on JWR who seemed to be in highly precarious situations - particularly several who were suffering badly from depression. I only hope that this wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back for any of them.

  I left the jws before the internet was even a pipedream, so managed a recovery of sorts without it (yeah, some recovery - forget the JWs by sticking needles in my arm or getting drunk nearly every day for thirteen years). But there were still some of the more hidden, underlying problems around for a long time afterwards that threatened my psychiatric health. Even after so many years I can sometimes get days where problems amplify out of all proportion to what they really are - I believe much of that stems from childhood and has old family issues (incl JW stuff) at the core. I guess you just learn to turn the volume down on that stuff with practice.

  Although I feel that shutting down with no warning was a very poor way to treat people and smacks of disrespect, I'm not going to retaliate in kind and I wish Rifter (and Moxie) well.
  
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  123

  Message from Designer Stubble to the former JWR members

  by Designer Stubble in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  message from designer stubble to the former jwr members.

  first of all i am glad to see that many of you have found your way to this great forum, facilitated by simon.

  i am sure that after the dust of the jwr shutdown has settled, you will find this to be a good new home.. i would like to apologize for the sudden closure of jwr.

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  Gargamel

  LoisLane. It wasn't Designer Stubble's site. Personally, I'm grateful for the work he put in over there.

  I think that one problem is that the sudden cutting off of the website could feel reminiscent of what people felt when they were first cut off from the religion/cult. Things that happen along the same theme tend to feel amplified.

  I do feel that removing the site with no warning was a wrong move on the owner's (not DS's) part, but I wasn't party to the discussion behind that i.e. there are probably reasons of which I'm unaware.

  So, I'm guessing it will feel more hurtful to those who still have severe, unresolved pain from leaving/being kicked out of the organisation.

  The way it looks to me is that JWR ain't coming back, so maybe it's time to open up the deeper-lying stuff.