Posts by Gollum

27

What is the worst thing about leaving?

by sleepy in

jw
friends

.

everyone probably has a slightly different experience when leaving the witnesses.the worst aspect about this for me is the realisation that my enteire life has been lived and directed by a false premiss, and the effect past decisions now have on my life.. it can make me feel sick in the stomach on occation.. also the idea that friends and family think i have tuned bad or evil to have left jehovah is qute disturbing at times.

Gollum

For me, the worst thing about leaving was giving up the feeling of mission, the idea that I was in a life and death struggle with right and wrong, a player in a cosmic battle.

While that may seem a bit overblown and adolescent, didn't we all sort of feel that way at one time? Like being in the org was putting you at a pivotal point in a huge drama, almost as if you were a hero in some fantasy, like "Star Wars" or "LOTR"? Now I'm just another blob in a big, uncaring universe, and while I have my part to play, I don't see it as some overblown Shakespearian play, more like my small niche in a vast ecologicl network, more "Sammy the clam" than "Luke Skywalker".

I have to admit, I actually gave up this feeling long before I actually left the org, but I still sort of miss it at times, even though in reality it was just and adolescent fantasy. Of course, there are some other adolescent fantasies I still maintain, usually involving a game of Nude greased Twister.

49

Would it be better to have a halt to war topics ?

by Simon in

unfortunately, it seems that people are unable or unwilling to debate or discuss the war and stay civil.

people are accused of all sorts of extremes such as "advocating child torture and rape" if you are against the war or "being a mass murderer and war criminal" if you support it.. some people seem to want to be able to post anything they want and it be accepted verbatim while other people are denied an opinion that doesn't agree with theirs.. i for one am sick of it and i suspect that other people are too.. this is supposed to be a site for jw related issues.

not exclusively but primarily.

Gollum

Simon,

It's a hard call, and if I were in your shoes I'd be pretty tempted to try and do something about it,but I don't think it would work. I honestly feel that these things are somewhat self regulating and will either die down, or just be contained.

I know in my own case, while I have a strong anti-war bias, I'm certainly willing to try and have an intellegent discussion with someone that feels the other way. If we can both make our points in a reasonable, rational way, then we both might learn something. Of course, when has that ever happened on any online forum? It tends to be the nature of the beast that it slides down to mudslinging. It's one reason that I haven't posted much on any of the war threads. I think others feel the same, so soon it just becomes the same old people shouting at each other and going "Nah,Nah,Nah, I can't hear you". This gets old even for even them after awhile and it will die out. Or at worse it contains those individuals ranting in a thread that the rest of us can ignore.

I wish it would be possible to have a calm discussion, but it's impossible to make that happen by rulemaking.

Just my two cents worth,

Gollum

18

How many congs were you in

by hippikon in

jw
friends

i'm a little interested in the mobility of jw's.

they were all unique in how they applied the talmud watchtower law.

i explained that to myself as diferent congs have diferent personalities but as i saw more and more "bad stuff" can to understand there was no "god" in "gods organisation" .

Gollum

Ten for me, all pretty much up and down the West coast of the US.

I eventually got real good at sniffing out which ones I could deal with, and generally found if I moved into the more "urban sophisticate" neighboorhood of a city my life was considerably easier. Didn't always pan out, especially when I moved to central Oregon, but all in all, there were only a couple halls that I was in that were completly dysfunctional, as opposed to normal, everyday dysfunctional.

23

I remember when floppys were 8 inches

by hippikon in

i remember when floppys were 8 inches, then 514, now 312 - talk about deflation with age.

but at least my 312 lasts for 100 mb

Gollum

Ahh, classic trash games

star trek: The real reason I spent all that time landscaping for a summer to afford this sucker. One of the guys in my high school physics class had this, and I had to have it. Little asterisk photon torpedoes, and a ship made out of =_0

battle of midway: whole lot of fun.

Temple of Ashphi?: Not sure if this was the name, the brain cell that remembered this bravely sacrificed itself to an alcohol molecule. However, it was basically a graphic dungeon crawl

Various adventures.

I think I first played the infocomm adventure games on this machine, but a text adventure on any computer tends to blur together.

After I got my first real job out of school I immediately bought a Atari 800, just for "Star Raiders".

23

I remember when floppys were 8 inches

by hippikon in

i remember when floppys were 8 inches, then 514, now 312 - talk about deflation with age.

but at least my 312 lasts for 100 mb

Gollum

Yep, z-80 was my first assembly too!!

Did you ever use the fm radio trick for debugging? The old trash80's broadcast like a SOB, and if you tuned off a signal on an FM radio, you could tell where the program was at, particuarly if it was stuck in a loop.

Served me well when I jumped over to doing 8 bit nintendo.

Ahh, those were the days, why when I was first programming, we had to code uphill, both ways. And we were lucky to be able to lick gravel off the road for pay.

Tell that to kids these days, they won't believe you.

23

I remember when floppys were 8 inches

by hippikon in

i remember when floppys were 8 inches, then 514, now 312 - talk about deflation with age.

but at least my 312 lasts for 100 mb

Gollum

I'm with Farkel on this one.

My first computer was a TRS-80 model one with 16k and a cassette drive. My standard test for ancient geek knowledge is if you know what the "Kansas City Standard" was.

My first commercial gig was on the Commodore 64. So proud to have a computer with a floppy.

Then my first IBM with a hard drive for cross compiling, I couldn't imagine ever filling that massive 20 meg drive.

9

Overseer's car

by JH in

jw
friends

where i live, the circuit overseer usually drives a fairly expensive car, well equipped.

i never saw a co drive some small and modest car with no air conditioning.

what kind of car does the overseer drive in your area?

Gollum

In the US at least, the org supplies a car through a lease agreement with GM I believe. They keep the car for a couple of years, then it gets swapped out.

In the more rural circuits, this caused open rebellion on the part of some CO's. Since the lease didn't allow the cars to pull a trailer, and the society was really pushing the CO's to use these cars, and in the rural areas the CO's really liked to pull trailers (for good reason, who wants to live with a new stranger every week?) there was some real conflict going on.

31

Political Corectness must stop

by Adam in

jw
friends

please pause a moment, reflect back, and take the following multiple choice test.

(the events are actual cuts from past history.

they actually happened!

Gollum

Country Girl,

Absolultely nothing wrong with being a redneck. LIke I said, those are my people. Just like there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim. When we start harrasing a large group of people based on the actions of a very, very small percentage of that group, then we are A.) In my opinion, acting morally wrong, and B.) being completly ineffective in responding to our security needs.

My point is, we don't harrass rednecks or people from Idaho just because of some well publized incidents involving a very,very,very small percentage of that population. We wouldn't even consider it, because it seems wrong to us. However, it doesn't seem to feel nearly so wrong when it's a group we could not be mistaken for personally.

31

Political Corectness must stop

by Adam in

jw
friends

please pause a moment, reflect back, and take the following multiple choice test.

(the events are actual cuts from past history.

they actually happened!

Gollum

Adam,

Sorry, went all stupid and didn't catch the ref to the other thread. I'll throw a comment in over there later, though I probably don't have anything real intellegent to say about that situation (I know, I know, never stopped me before)

Your comment about idological vs. realistic makes me think of a point about this topic.

I sort of think that political correctness and it's apparent polar opposite, stereotyping, have a lot in common. They are both usefull in moderation, and potentially deadly when taken to extremes. Stereotyping is an important skill, we receive a lot of information, and we can't spend all our time processing it, so we put it in little bins. It was a survival skill when we were hanging out in trees, being saber tooth tiger bait. You needed to put something into the bad bin without much thought if you wanted to stay alive. Same thing today, if I'm walking down the street, I don't have time to get to know everybody personally, so they go into a bin, yuppie, gangbanger, old fart in my way, etc etc. And taken to extreme, it makes you stupid, because you put people in the wrong bin. I think political correctness has a good heart, in that it wants to make people think about how what they say and do affects social relationships, and effective social realtionships is a survival skill. However, taken to extreme and saying that all discourse about differences, or banning anything the could possibly be conceived as hurtfull is just as dangourous and bad as overdoing the stereotyping.

How this relates in my mind to the screening stuff, is that just targeting people who appear to be Arabs (which would probably sweep up a lot of non Muslims, like Hindu's or Christians for that matter) would be counter productive. That's just my opinion, which of course is correct

And I would get real nervous if there was a religion checkbox, since I would get real twitchy with Ashcroft in the loop when I check the Atheist box. Probably get my citizenship revoked.

31

Political Corectness must stop

by Adam in

jw
friends

please pause a moment, reflect back, and take the following multiple choice test.

(the events are actual cuts from past history.

they actually happened!

Gollum

Adam,

Since you invited me to semi hijack your thread (can you hijack your own thread?) I'll put in my two cents on the politics is fun thing.

I agree, it's a hoot. Which is why I couldn't resist shooting of my fingers. The one thing I dislike with many political threads is they get very black and white, and I find myself defending positions, that while I hold them, doesn't give the full picture of what I believe. I think other people tend to do the same. Then it just falls apart into a name calling session until the "nazi rule" gets invoked.

As much as I sometimes dislike many of those that practice it, (Kissenger comes to mind) and the results that come about from it (bombing of Cambodia) I think the only way politics on the international stage can be conducted is via realpolitik. Idological stances almost always turn around and bite you in the bum. It's one of the main issues I have with the Bush adminstration. They took an idoglogical stance, and sort of took this "sole remaining superpower" thing a little too much to heart. They could probably have gotten what they wanted with much less grief if they didn't go around irritating their natural allies for no good reason. And mostly when people are discussing politics, it's from an idological standpoint, which probably doesn't map to what really happens that well.