Posts by closer2fine

my boyfriend (feels more like fiance though i guess as we've talked about but just need the ring) and i have been together over two yrs and living together for over a yr. he never was a jw, and professes to be no religon and isn't even sure god exsists.

is your signifigant other a jw or non-witness?

closer2fine

My husband has never been a JW. He doesn't practice any religion or really believe in any.

closer

13

Are you planning to see....

by Flowerpetal in

jw
friends

mel gibson's new movie about jesus' cruixifiction?

closer2fine

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20030919/D7TL4MF00.html

Cardinal Praises Gibson's 'The Passion'

Sep 18, 8:18 PM (ET)

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Mel Gibson's film "The Passion" has won another endorsement, with a top cardinal rejecting suggestions the movie may offend Jewish sensibilities and promote anti-Semitism.

"Anti-Semitism, like all forms of racism, distorts the truth by putting an entire race in a bad light. This film does nothing of the kind," Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos said in Thursday's La Stampa newspaper.

Many conservative Christians say the upcoming film powerfully depicts the last 12 hours of Jesus' life. But Jewish leaders say it suggests Jews were responsible for the death of Christ, which could trigger anti-Semitic attacks.

The Roman Catholic Church formally rejected Jewish culpability in Christ's death nearly 40 years ago.

Hoyos, a Colombian, is prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy and heads a Vatican commission that's trying to bring ultraconservatives back to the church. Gibson is a member of an ultraconservative Catholic movement.

"The Passion" is scheduled for release in the spring. Gibson, who directed and co-wrote the film, has defended it as faithful to the Gospels and said it's intended to "inspire, not offend."

The cardinal told La Stampa he saw an unfinished version of the film that Gibson brought to Rome recently.

"I felt moments of deep spiritual intimacy with Jesus Christ," Hoyos said.

U.S. Archbishop John P. Foley, who heads the Vatican's social-communications office, told The Associated Press last week he hoped to show the film in the Vatican, and doubted that criticisms of the film were valid.

40

Ever Typed Your Real Name Into Google?

by Englishman in

jw
friends

.

i did.. i'm famous!.

closer2fine

Holy Shit.

I typed in my real name & my address came up. I'm unlisted & unpublished and all that (so past friends *read* JW's, can't track me down). But our former homeowners association has us listed on their website. Scary.

closer

27

What search engine do you most often use and why?

by berylblue in

jw
friends

very curious...there's a reason for this question.

does anyone perceive if there is a proclivity toward a certain engine if one is, say, computer savvy?

college grad?

closer2fine

I use http://www.dogpile.com

closer

40

FLORIDA MAN BEATS HOME OWNERS ASSOCIATION GETS SUED FOR LEGAL FEES

by Yerusalyim in

the retired marine that took on the home owners association for the right to fly his american flag won the case against them and earned the right to fly his flag.

however...he was then sued by the home owners association to be forced to pay their legal fees.

stupid...he's appealling.

closer2fine

If he won, why in the world would they think he was responsible for their legal fees? I thought you only had a right to claim this if YOU won.

closer

23

Story Time

by joannadandy in

jw
friends

hey--i could really use some input from parents and kids at heart.. i am volunteering to do a story time this saturday.

i am supposed to read whatever i want to the kids for an hour.

i left a message that i would take requests for stories, but so far no one has made any suggestions.. i am just wondering what some of you would suggest i read.

closer2fine

Books by Bill Peet are a hit in this house.

Also the Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park.

Stories involving Little Critters are favorites here by Mercer Mayer

closer (if I think of more, I'll post later)

7

Oklahoma Business has to shut down for selling Canadian drugs

by Sadie5 in

jw
friends

rx depot, which i understand has several offices throughout the u.s. was ordered by the fda through court orders to shut down its office in tulsa, ok. .

it is a business which takes prescriptions from local doctors and obtains them from canadian sources.

customers were saving tons of money.

closer2fine

When I lost my health benefits I had trouble affording my medication. I never gave it a thought before, just paid the co-pay at the drugstore. So I called around all the drug stores in my area to get prices and they varied by as much as $17 a month for the medication. WTF????

So now I go through a Canadian RX company I found online/mail order. I save 55% buying from them. Funny thing is, I got the info from my physician - she agrees the drug companies are a racket in the U.S.

closer

7

Cult! Fear and loathing in College Station

by closer2fine in

jw
friends

lol - this is for our texas members!!!.

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/news/460628.html?mkey=1064172cult!

by chris bellamy.

closer2fine

lol - this is for our Texas members!!!

http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/news/460628.html?mkey=1064172

Cult! Fear and loathing in College Station

By Chris Bellamy

I tried to escape. Honest, I did. But believe me when I tell you, I didn't know what the hell was going on. What was happening around me was dumbfounding, disturbing, frightening.

I don't know what it was that compelled me to stay. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was my obscene sense of curiosity. Maybe it was the smell.

Whatever the reason, last Friday night I found myself, along with my co-workers Asad Kudiya and Kevin Buehler, in probably the most peculiar situation of my life.

Cannons were firing. People were chanting. They were gyrating in unison. My God, they were doing synchronized pushups!

This was called "The Yell," and I found myself unwittingly and unintentionally thrown into the middle of it. It was there that I began to discover just what College Station, Texas was all about-and I'm not exaggerating when I say it may have changed my life forever.

More than 30,000 Aggie fans crowded the streets outside the stadium just before midnight last Friday, as they do before every home game, ready to take part in this massive pre-game pep rally.

Now, I had always heard about cults. I had even seen a few documentaries on them on The Learning Channel. Heaven's Gate. Jim Jones and The People's Temple.

But never had I seen a cult up close and personal until we settled into our places in Kyle Field Friday night.

It started with the pushups. Then it was the "Fighting Aggie War Hymn," a tune repeated ad nauseam all night long, one that still rings in my head at this very hour.

Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. All hail to dear old Texas A&M...

Then it got weird. A group of young men, wearing matching overalls, took center stage down on the sidelines as the raucous crowd suddenly hushed. The men began leading these Aggie faithful in chants, cheers and the reading of Masonic verses.

And everyone knew exactly what to do-and when to do it. They knew what every hand gesture meant. They knew every word of every chant and every song.

Everyone except us, of course. We, visitors from Utah, did not belong. We did not have the ceremony down by heart. But we did what we were told. What else could we do?

"I was confused...and scared," a genuinely shaken Asad told me afterward. "I felt like if I didn't do what they were doing, they were going to rape me."

We leaned over and bowed our heads with the rest of them. We repeated those infernal chants and sang the praises of the Aggie gods. We leaped up and threw our hands in the air, and praised the Good Laaaaawwwwd, as the four men down in front declared a Jihad on the Utah Ute football team.

Beat the hell out of Utah, they chanted. Beat the hell out of Utah!!

The four Yell leaders wailed on the microphone and told the crowd to Riiiiiise Up! They made a strange, Hitler-looking gesture to the crowd, and all of a sudden the people around us threw their arms around us and we all began to sway from side to side, singing that war hymn...and it was then that I realized that everyone was speaking in tongues.

Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. Hullabaloo, Caneck, Caneck. We're gonna beat you all to Chigaroogarem. Chigaroogarem. Rough, tough, real stuff, Texas A&M!

My memory is a little fuzzy, but if I remember correctly, everyone around us was wearing long, white cloaks and burning candles. And If I'm not mistaken, there was a virgin sacrifice as well.

Strange and terrible things began happening inside me. These people had been brainwashed, I was sure of it...but...I kind of liked it. I was oddly titillated by the whole experience, ashamed as I am to admit that.

I was conflicted. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I loved them and loathed them. I was repulsed, yet mysteriously drawn to their sick, twisted game, comforted by this theatre of mass worship, this cornucopia of rabid fan psychosis. It was like a KKK gathering on mushrooms.

Talk about worshipping false idols. This was just for the football team, for Pete's sake. The football team!

The U football team sometimes struggles to get 35,000 fans at the actual game-A&M got that many for the pep rally. On a late Friday night, no less. These kids should have been getting wasted, having sex and walking around town in a drunken stupor stealing stop signs and falling asleep in public fountains.

But no-at half past midnight, they were at the football stadium, worshipping Dennis Franchione while four boys in overalls did their best impression of an Episcopal sermon.

I'd never seen anything like this place. None of us had.

I mean, what can you say about a town that simultaneously symbolizes everything that is right about college football, and everything that's wrong about our nation's educational system?

But it wasn't just the football fans-the whole town of College Station was ass-backward.

The place was littered with the scary but aptly named Crickets on Steroids with Wings, which may or may not have been the apocalyptic, flesh-eating bugs prophesied in the Bible.

The night desk clerk at our hotel was named Lucifer. Everyone in town drove a maroon-colored pickup truck. The uniform code at every business establishment was an Aggies T-shirt. The school marching band looked uncannily like the Third Reich. We went to a bar where people actually played darts for hours and hours on end. Who does that?!

Small things, I know. But after our experience Friday night, every little thing made the town seem all the more strange.

When we left "The Yell" Friday night, none of us could speak. What the hell just happened, we all thought to ourselves. That wasn't just school spirit-it was something different altogether. Those people were just...different. If this wasn't a cult, I didn't know what was.

The experience of College Station was an odd one. To tell you the truth, I'm just glad I got out of there alive. Hopefully, the place didn't rub off on me.

Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck. Chigaroogarem. Chigaroogarem.

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