Posts by Descender

42

I Am Legend JW email

by Descender in

jw
friends

so my sister-in-law, who is a pretty hardcore jw, showed me an email that looked like it had been passed around quite a bit, so i figured someone on here had probably seen it.

supposedley it's a picture from the movie "i am legend" where will smith is walking through new york and all the buildings in the background are in ruins except for the bethel building, which stands out, undamaged and clean.

i watched the movie and don't remember seeing anything like that so i just figured that some jw photoshopped it and sent it out to the jw community to show that the bethel building is protected by god even in a post apocaliptical world run over with zombie vampires.

Descender

So my sister-in-law, who is a pretty hardcore JW, showed me an email that looked like it had been passed around quite a bit, so I figured someone on here had probably seen it. Supposedley it's a picture from the movie "I Am Legend" where Will Smith is walking through New York and all the buildings in the background are in ruins except for the Bethel building, which stands out, undamaged and clean. I watched the movie and don't remember seeing anything like that so I just figured that some JW photoshopped it and sent it out to the JW community to show that the Bethel building is protected by god even in a post apocaliptical world run over with zombie vampires. I don't know.

Anyone seen the email I'm talking about?

14

social skills and JW's

by Descender in

jw
friends

it occured to me the other day that many jehovah's witnesses have very bad social skills outside of the kindom hall.

my brother, who still goes to meetings but isn't a strong believer, and his wife, who is a 4th generation jw with very stong beliefs and a very self righteous attitude asked my wife and i if we'd like to go for a hike at a local national park the other day.

i faded years ago and my wife is not and has never been a jw and isn't religious.

Descender

After I told my wife that JW's sometimes think that demons inhabit things like antiques, old records, and toys she said it might be funny to go to the store and buy a creepy little toy of some sort and send it to my sister-in-law without a return address with a message on it that says, "Hi, I'm a demon."

She asked me what would happen and I told her I bet my SIL would probably run outside and burn it right away. My wife said that'd be great because then she could just keep buying the same creepy toy and conspicously leave it beside my sister-in-law's bed or somewhere in their house everytime she burns one. :)

14

social skills and JW's

by Descender in

jw
friends

it occured to me the other day that many jehovah's witnesses have very bad social skills outside of the kindom hall.

my brother, who still goes to meetings but isn't a strong believer, and his wife, who is a 4th generation jw with very stong beliefs and a very self righteous attitude asked my wife and i if we'd like to go for a hike at a local national park the other day.

i faded years ago and my wife is not and has never been a jw and isn't religious.

Descender

It occured to me the other day that many Jehovah's Witnesses have very bad social skills outside of the kindom hall.

My brother, who still goes to meetings but isn't a strong believer, and his wife, who is a 4th generation JW with very stong beliefs and a very self righteous attitude asked my wife and I if we'd like to go for a hike at a local national park the other day. I faded years ago and my wife is not and has never been a JW and isn't religious.

They came by and picked us up and while we were driving up to the park my sister-in-law kept on randomly mentioning Jehovah, the new system, and at one point when my brother was talking about how he couldn't understand how this guy he knew was acting a certain way, she said, it's not so hard to understand, he's part of the world, he's probably being controlled by demons. At this point my wife leaned over to me and said, "she can not be serious, demons ... seriously?"

I thought about it and remembered back to when I was an active witness with only witness friends and I remember that JW speak was a very common occurence. Just in general every day conversation we would mention Jehovah, the new system, demons, satan, etc. If a non-JW got caught up in the mix of one of our conversations back then I would imagine they'd think we sounded crazy just like my wife now thinks my sister-in-law is crazy. My wife can't believe that my sister-in-law could actually believe that one of my brother's friends is controlled by a demon. And I can't believe how crazy I used to sound.

35

Honestly, When You Were A Witness, Were You A Jerk?

by minimus in

jw
friends

did you think you were better than everyone else?

did you talk down to people?

were you a know-it-all?

Descender

1) Did you think you were better than everyone else?

Yes, but I was always told that I was better than everyone else, so who was I to question.

2) Did you talk down to people?

Back in the JW days .... I tried not to, but sometimes I did catch myself doing it. Like I said, I felt like I was better than other people.

3) Were you a know-it-all?

Yeah, I was a know-it-all, and when I look back on myself it was pretty ridiculous. I knew nothing.

I will have to say, back in those days I had a ton of self confidence. I thought I was god's gift to ..... well, everyone. But with all things that are only a facade, my confidence had to be destroyed several times along the way to where I am today in order for me to actually find out who I truly was, question the witnesses, and find out what life is all about.

69

Any videogamers here?

by R.F. in

this is my #1 hobby.

i have a ps2, psp, and xbox.

i was mainly an xbox kind of guy until they completely abandoned it soon after the 360 was released.

Descender

In general, console games aren't near as addictive as an mmporg. The Wii is a really great game console to play games on with your spouse or your kids. And I don't ever feel like I have to spend massive amounts of time on it. I very rarely spend more than 30 to 45 minutes at most on the Wii in one sitting. And it's fun for multiple people. I had several people over to my house a couple of weekends ago and we all had fun on the Wii. Now massive multi player online computer games are different. Sure you can try to get your spouse hooked on it, and although it's fun and it keeps him or her off your back. There are certain pitfalls.

I got my ex-spouse addicted to EQ awhile after I started to play. We were living in a small one bedroom low income apartment, but somehow we found the money to afford a new computer and then set up a new phone line so we'd have two internet connections. This was 2000 so cable modems weren't main stream yet. Suddenly I had more reason to stay online playing EQ because she was playing too. We became addicted together and it was fun. Eventually our play times increased as our character's levels increased and we had to spend more and more time questing and raiding and trade-skilling. We both got into one of the biggest guilds on the server and suddenly it was a job. To be in the guild we had to be on at certain times. The guild had mandatory raiding times. In this guild raiding times were set for Monday through Friday 6pm central to 1am central. Saturday at 10am central until whenever and Sunday was optional. In order to stay in the guild you had to attend 70% of the mandatory raids.

You had to have a high level of skill in playing and follow a button sequence to the second, especially if you were a healer. If you messed up and that caused a raid whipe you were generally berated in all CAPS in front of the rest of the guild, cussed at and given no option for loot that evening. It was actually very stressfull. I had horrible stomach pains during the time that I was raiding the most and went to the doctor and ended up taking ulcer medication.

After years of playing with my wife I decided to cut back on my gaming, whereas she decided to keep playing. I had cut my playing down to almost nothing and had no idea that my wife had started talking to several of the guys from the guild through an IM and then she started talking to them on the phone. Then she started taking videos of herself, usually stripping and all the things that go along with that and sending those videos out to these guys. The guys would take videos of themselves and send them to her. I found all this out a few months later while looking something up on her computer and ran accross all this stuff. At the time, it was all very heart-braking.

She eventually left me and told me, amongst other things, that playing the game had contributed so much to us becoming different people that she just wasn't attracted to me anymore. We went to marriage counseling where the counselors told us that getting so involved in a game together had actually estranged us instead of drawing us together. She later used our joint credit card to fly a guy from the guild half way accross the country to meet her in the apartment that she moved into. That didn't work out and we got divorced. The last time I ever spoke to her on the phone a couple of years ago, she was dating a guy and said she was so happy that he wasn't a gamer like me.

I ended up wishing that I'd never picked up that Everquest box. And then I turned right around and installed WoW after it came out. So, really I'm kind of hypocrite. But alas, learn from my mistakes.

69

Any videogamers here?

by R.F. in

this is my #1 hobby.

i have a ps2, psp, and xbox.

i was mainly an xbox kind of guy until they completely abandoned it soon after the 360 was released.

Descender

I've always been a big gamer. I've had almost all the console systems from the Atari 2600 onward. Currently I only lack a PS3. I've played a lot of the massive multi player online games on the computer and I was addicted, actually addicted to a few of them.

You know you're addicted to a game when it's all you can think of. You're going to work and the only thing on your mind is the new armor you got last night and how you just can't wait to get home to go raiding in that new dungeon. You know you're addicted when all you dream of is the game you're playing. You know you're addicted when you happily forgo almost all real life activities so you can play one single game 60 to 80 hours a week, every week for months or years.

Just like all addictions you'll try to rationalize you're game playing when someone confronts you about it. You're saving money, you don't like going outside, other people watch TV and you play the game instead, you're an introvert, this is the way you relieve stress, you'll quit when you get to level 60, no wait, it's level 70 now. Maybe you'll just play a little while longer until you've gotten into a big guild, explored all the dungeons, and gotten a whole set of epics then you'll quit. Oh no, they just came out with another expansion and all your gear is crap, you don't want to quit when just anyone can easily go and get better gear than you have, of yeah they raised the level cap again and when you quit you need to retire at the top.

Then one day several years down the road when the game is winding down and everyone is migrating to the new game on the horizon you look back over your gaming career and see all those missed days of work, those missed relationships, those missed days out in the sun. You realize that you're different than you were before you started playing this game. You're out of shape, you've gained a lot of weight, you're skin is pasty, your mind is in a fog and look at those dark circles under your eyes from all those nights you stayed up until 5am raiding. And what do you have to show for it? a few high level pixels that aren't worth anything. But you saved so much money from not going out to the movies, or out to eat, or the bar, or on vacation, right? Probably not, as you played the game you probably stopped progressing at work, if you could, you probably cut your hours back to the base minimum you could still work and survive so you had more time to play your game. No money made here.

At least that was my experience. I played 4 1/2 years of EQ and retired from that game in 2004 with several high level characters with somewhere around 320 days played. That's 320x24 hours = 7,200 hours played on EQ. I retired from WoW a couple of months ago with a lvl 70 priest with all epics, a lvl 63 shaman, and several twink characters ranging from 19, 29, and 49. I had played 2 years of WoW and had around 120 days played between all those characters. When I look back on it now, I'm afraid it looks like a lot of wasted time.

137

I hate Walmart!

by Elsewhere in

jw
friends

i rarely ever set foot in the place and will go out of my way to avoid shopping there.

tonight i made the mistake of giving walmart the benefit of the doubt and walked in the door.. they didn't have the main item i was looking for, but they did have one other small item.

i headed to the front to check out only to find they had only a few check-outs open and all of the lines were far too long.

Descender

I actually live within 30 miles of the Wal Mart home office, which means around this area Wal Mart is pretty much the only option. I'm actually surrounded by Wal Mart Super Centers, there is one less than two miles to the south of me, and there is one less than two miles to the north of me. There is a Sam's club right beside one of those Wal Marts and just down the road about a mile is a Wal Mart neighborhood market. They're building another Sam's club about 3 miles away and just a couple miles past that new Sam's club is another Super Center. If I wanted to make a drive-by I could visit a total of 12 Wal Mart Super Centers, Sams, and Wal Mart Neighborhood Markets in a span of about 35 minutes. Give me couple more minutes and I could visit the Wal Mart home offices and drive by the original Walton's 5 and dime where it all started.

So, although I'll agree that the customer service at Wal Mart is non-existant, that they don't pay their employees enough, that they sometimes don't care for their stores the way they should, and the fact that they employ overseas slave labor, people around this area don't have a lot of other choices as far as grocery items are concerned. Now for home improvement items, I'll always frequent Lowe's or Home Depot over Wal Mart even if they are a little more expensive.

12

Harry Potter and the Superstitious Dubbies(not Dobbie)

by undercover in

jw
friends

(this thread is inspired in part by fifi40's thread about battling her ex-husband in letting their son go see the new hp movie.).

still having contact with jw family and some jw friends that i grew up with, it's interesting to see their reaction when conversations come up about the hp books and movies.. my jw mother-in-law snorted and grunted her disapproval and locked herself in her bedroom while visiting while i was watching one of the movies.

i was watching it when she came in from shopping with other family members and i wasn't about to turn it just because she was in the room.. my brother, dfd but not free of the control of the wts, expressed shock that i had read all the books and commented on them being "demonic".

Descender

I guess the Harry Potter ban is still going strong with the JW's. My brother, who hasn't been going to a lot of meetings as of late came over to my house last Saturday with two Harry Potter movies and asked if he could watch them with me. I didn't have anything better to do, so we sat down and watched two Harry Potter movies in a row.

My brother's wife called during the movies to see what he was doing and he told me that if she asked, to tell her that he was watching Lord of the Rings with me. I made fun of him and said, how exactly is Harry Potter any worse than Lord of the Rings. He said, I don't know, but if she knows I watched Harry Potter with you she'll make sure my life is a living hell for awhile.

117

Do you have to pay federal income tax? Is there a law requirering you to?

by frankiespeakin in

jw
friends

i haven't payed mine for almost 3 years because i don't like what the government is doing with its war machine and taking away our civil liberties with the patriot act:.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5981720328972328609&q=irs+tax+is+illegal+-+no+tax+law+exists%21%21&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1623838328974046647&q=law+federal+income+tax&total=77&start=30&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=6.

Descender

To say that the rich pay the majority of the taxes is true. But the percentage of their income that they pay towards taxes, as long as they take advantage of all the legal tax loopholes, will almost always be much smaller than the percentages of lower incomes.

My ex in-laws owned an accounting firm. It wasn't just your run of the mill rinky dink cpa office, it was an international accounting firm that could deal in taxes in all states and other countries. They were what most people would call rich and they legally paid in an average of about 15% every year, that's all. I make a lot less than they did and I pay in around 30% because I can't take advantage of all the loopholes.

So saying that the rich pay the majority of all the taxes is true, because even if they only pay out at 15%, that 15% of 5 million dollars is going to be a whole lot more than my 30% of 60 thousand dollars. It's just that the percentages and loopholes aren't exactly fair for those that aren't rich.

15

"It will change your life"

by lost_light06 in

jw
friends

i have to share this.

last night i had an appointment with a lady.

i was under the impression that it was regarding life insurance, something i will need to get soon, however there were hints that there was some sort of "business opportunity".

Descender

Yeah, looking back on the time I was recruited into a MLM company called Equinox, I can see what you're talking about. I was 19 years old and very niave about most everything as most 19 year old witnesses are. My girlfriend at the time, another witness, recruited me into the company.

It had all the aspects that you speak of, the recruitment meetings where the Equinox higher ups would say what a life changing opportunity this was and how fast you'd get a return on your investment. The lady that supervised these meetings was supposedly an ex-Fortune 500 company exec that had seen more opportunity in this MLM business and had jumped in and quit her high paying executive job. We would get to see the checks that people were supposedly receiving in amounts of like $25000 per month and such. Someone would get up in front of the crowd and tell how this business had saved his life and his families lives because now he could afford all those things that his family needed.

So, being the nieve young witness that I was, and wanting to be with my girlfriend, I signed up. I took out a $4500 loan from the bank with my car as collateral, bought product to re-sell from the company and became an Equinox associate. I didn't understand what the company was really about. I sold a few things but didn't understand the upsale requirements on the things I was selling so failed to make a profit on most of the things I did sale because they were already too high priced before any additional charges you'd tack on to make a profit. I brought in a few associates myself, but as soon as they realized what it was about, I never heard from them again.

That was my first experience with a get-rich-quick MLM company and at first I really thought all I had to do was sign up and the money would just start flowing in. But the only way that you could have actually made money in that company was if you recruited more people that were willing to take out loans themselves to buy product and then if they would do the same and recruit others, and on down the line. I, just like 99% of the other supposedly happy rich associates could not make any money with this venture to save our lives. We would have to get up in front of the new recruits and lie about how good we were doing and how great of an opportunity this was so that we'd have a chance to make some money off these new recruits through our downlines. It wasn't actually about selling the product at all, it was all about selling a fake company to get new recruits (ala JW's).

Every Monday morning the associates were supposed to come in to have a group speakerphone meeting with the president of the company. He was a jerk. He'd get on the phone and tell everyone how they needed to do better and bring more recruits into the company, how he and his family were going to take a trip to the Swiss Alps the next week to stay at his personal villa and they were going to fly in his own personal jet. And how, if we'd just try harder to recruit then we could have a piece of all his riches too. I remember an instance where I lady in another office, maybe somewhere in Chicago got on phone and everyone could hear her question him and she said she just didn't feel like this was a legitimate business because it seemed the only way to make money was to recruit more people and not sell the product. Mr. President guy flew off the hook and called her a bitch and told her to get the f**k out and that she was no part of his business anymore. Then he said, "that's how you all can handle a whiney bitch." Everyone laughed and clapped and agreed. I felt really bad about the whole situation, but I laughed as well.

After we got out of that particular meeting, I guess I was in need of a talking to because I wasn't bringing in enough recruits. So I was told to sit down in a chair in the middle of the office where everyone could see. Then the supervisor (Fortune 500 lady) nodded and gave the go-ahead to the girl that had been my girlfriend and she yelled and berrated me in front of everyone and told me that I wasn't a worthwhile enough associate for her to waste her time on and that I either needed to shape up and work harder to bring in more recruits or I needed to get the hell out. So I got up and got the hell out, never to return.

It was basically a $4500 lesson for a 19 year old on why I should never get involved in something like that again, although at that particular time I couldn't see the similarities to the JW's. A couple years after that there was a 20/20 episode on Equinox and a bunch of previous associates were on there talking about how they were going to bring a class action lawsuit against Equinox for being a pyramid scheme. The business filed bankruptsy shorty afterwards.