Posts by Duncan

This is significant. One of the first things I do every new year, when I see a calendar, or get a new diary, is check what day of the week April the fourth is.

Its usefulness lies in the fact that every year, whether it's a leap year or not, whatever day of the week the 4/4 is, that will also be true for 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, and 12/12. Works every year.

This little-known fact is, I think, a very useful thing. It can map out for you great chunks of the year. Want to know what day Christmas falls this year? Without looking at a calendar? You already know now that 12/12 is a Friday, which means that 19/12 and 26/12 are also Fridays - there you go! Christmas is a Thursday!

Amaze your friends! Ask them their birthday, and if you're lucky, and can do a quick bit of mental arithmetic, there'a a good chance you can tell them what day of the week that is.

This little nugget of useful info is brought to you by:

35

reponse letter to JW-fleshly-brother about my leaving the WT

by AhHah in

jw
friends

dear (jw-brother), .

i was pleased and pleasantly surprised to receive your thoughtful letter.

thank you for your concern and for taking the time to write.

Duncan

AhHah

I think your letter is simply wonderful. Well done.

I hope the day dawns soon when you and he will be able to look back on this Watchtower-mandated estrangement with disbelief and wonderment. I'm sure that day will come.

Keep smiling through.

Duncan.

5

Life in a Peaceful New World

by Duncan in

jw
friends

listen, i know this has been done a million times before on this board, but

this morning i was called on by jehovahs witnesses.

you see, today, the whole world is at war

Duncan

Listen, I know this has been done a million times before on this board, but…

…this morning I was called on by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Well, just one actually. A grey-haired chap, around 60 years I guess. There were others working the street also, I noticed. He offered me a leaflet.

I’m looking at it as I write. It’s called “Life in a Peaceful New World” and shows the usual Watchtower imagery: rural landscape, mountains in the distance, lake in the middle distance, assorted people, all different races, all grinning inanely, all clothed in exotic national dress.

I decided it would be a bit of fun to engage him in conversation, to see where it went.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful” he said “if the world looked like this?”

On the whim of the moment, I decided upon a style: dumb, not-quite-following-his-logic.

“What do you mean? The world does look like this”

“Oh no, it doesn’t. Not like this”

“Yes it does. Some of it anyway. I stayed near a place like that last summer on my holidays” (This is actually true. We were in the south of Ireland in Kerry. There’s some stunning scenery there, mountains and lakes and stuff.)

“But no. Look at the people. Such peace”

I nodded, non commital.

“You see, today, the whole world is at war”

“Is it?” I said, with a touch of alarm. “The whole world? No one told me…”

“Yes, the whole world. Look at the evidence. Look around you”

Acting on his invitation, I made a big show of looking up the street and down the street. It was a beautiful, cloudless spring day today. Hardly a breeze stirring the trees, the loudest sound was birdsong.

“Pretty quiet here” I offered.

“No, I mean the world situation…” he said, with weary patience. At this point I think he had me marked down as a halfwit, and he decided to move on.

“…look, read the leaflet. If you like the message you can contact one of the addresses on the back.”

And he was gone. I went back inside with my leaflet.

I think the best bit of all was that “contact one of the addresses” line. He didn’t even direct me to the British one. Perhaps he thought too specific an instruction would be beyond me.

So, halfwit I may be, but at least I have some options in working out my path to salvation. There’s the Ghana office, or the Phillipines, Barbados…

38

Brother Ted, Theocratic Economics and Card Run-outs

by Duncan in

jw
friends

dear all,.

i nearly met up with brother ted f. the other day.

i say nearly, because i arrived round my mothers house just a few minutes after he left.

Duncan

Old Hippie, you said:

I so much WANT the Paradise to be true, want it to happen, to be like that;

And Blondie said:

JW bubble burster from way back

- which is exactly what I am, in this instance.

OH, I hear your despair, and I sympathise. But it IS a fantasy, it will never do you any good longing for it.

I am reminded of a line from one of James Thurber’s modern fables (after someone has just debunked his peoples entire myth-system and they find they have nothing left to live for):

“Why must the Shattermyth also be
a Crumplehope and Dampenglee?”

Duncan

38

Brother Ted, Theocratic Economics and Card Run-outs

by Duncan in

jw
friends

dear all,.

i nearly met up with brother ted f. the other day.

i say nearly, because i arrived round my mothers house just a few minutes after he left.

Duncan

Dear all,

Many thanks for all your responses. I got started on this late last night, finally finished and posted it at 2 a.m. I’m back in the office this morning reading all the replies.

I can’t really reply to everyone, I’ll just talk to a couple.

Old Hippie said:

I don't see why lions can't eat meat? Animals will get sick and will die, and so there will be a lot of sick and dead animals for lions and other animals to eat. Why do you want them to eat grass?

Old Hippie, old thing, it’s not me who says they’re going to go all veggie - it’s the Bible: Isaiah chapter 11, vs 6, 7

The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox

Me, I’m quite happy to accept that verse as a wonderful piece of Hebrew poetry, a powerful and lovely image of peace and tranquillity. But the Watchtower teaches that it is, in fact, a prophecy of an everyday state of affairs that will literally happen.

But, taking up your point: Dead animals – same as grass - don’t fight back or run away. The lions powerful body is a superb killing machine, it is not adapted for a life of scavenging carrion flesh. It simply wouldn’t need all that power and strength. Even allowing for your point to be valid, a lion that does the job of a hyena or vulture, does not need to be a lion anymore.

Anyway, imagine yourself for a moment as a New Order lion. You’re hungry, you have a big heavy body to keep nourished and there’s not been much in the way of dead animals around your neck of the woods for a few weeks. You’ve been (discreetly) following a decidedly old and frail-looking zebra for a few days now, tracking him, just waiting for him to breathe his last, so you an move in and get a feed. But darn it! He just won’t keel over! But … there’s no one around… you’re big, and strong, and fast, he’s weak and frail; you have massive, strong limbs with claws and teeth that would finish him in an instant. Who would know if you were to just … help things along a bit, help events take their course a bit faster? Surely now, OH, you wouldn’t want to put our poor New Order lion in that appalling moral dilemma?

Hilary:

It is so hard to imagine older Ted in his sixties! Actually, hard to imagine myself in my fifties

Right enough. When I think of you and me – we’re in our teens, my folks are still in their fifties and Ted is still 30. But his golden-blond hair is all grey now, and at 63, or whatever, he’s still having to clean windows – in this bitter February weather. And, as I said in my post, despite his years, in some ways he’s still a child, still looking forward to the fantasy-Disney-land New Order. A lifetime of hopes wasted.

Englishman:

how about Pompey then, you seen 'em lately?

Told you I saw them a Fratton Park last year, against Watford, didn’t I? We actually did the double over Pompey last year, lucky to take a single point at home this year. Pompey look like they’ll survive in the premiership okay. But what about them GoldenBoyz? Cup quarter-finals!

Once again, thanks to all for their kind comments.

Duncan.

38

Brother Ted, Theocratic Economics and Card Run-outs

by Duncan in

jw
friends

dear all,.

i nearly met up with brother ted f. the other day.

i say nearly, because i arrived round my mothers house just a few minutes after he left.

Duncan

Dear all,

I nearly met up with Brother Ted F. the other day. I say nearly, because I arrived round my mother’s house just a few minutes after he left. She’s always thrilled to tell me all about him. Though no longer her official study-conductor – he stepped down - he still makes time to call round and see how she is (she’s very ill) and he does genuinely care. He is one of the good-guy elder-types, he does have real warmth and compassion.

I haven’t seen him in years. Last time was at my nephew’s wedding, in the early nineties, but we didn’t really talk then – just a few pleasantries as we passed each other. The last meaningful conversation with him must have been 25 years ago.

But nearly seeing him got me thinking. Time was, when I was Robin to his Batman. His little protégé, “little Ted” they called me in the congregation. Apart from my mum, he was my biggest influence in the Truth. He pretty much brought me up in it.

I found my mind wandering back to the many times when I was young and he would describe the Paradise Earth to me. His ideas were always hugely influential in my mental picture of the new system.

“Oh, it’ll be marvellous, Duncan! We’ll all be living in the most wonderful countryside…” – it was always “countryside” with Ted, the word had a magical power for him, the New System had nothing to do with dirty overcrowded cities, brick-and-concrete landscapes, or motorways. “…and we’ll all have our own farms and grow our own food, Duncan, just like Jehovah always wanted us to do. And nobody will be rich, and nobody will be poor. There won’t even BE any money. If I grow some apples, I’ll call round to you and barter them for some of your milk. That’s the way it should be done, Jehovah’s way. Not for money, not for profit. Absolutely filthy stuff, money! Satan’s invention, to harden the hearts of men.”

Now, I surely can’t be alone in this. Anyone, like me, brought up “from infancy” in the Truth must have had this kind of Theocratic Economics drummed into them as a child. I’ve never forgotten it. It was all a part of the dreamy-fantasy New World: it would have nothing ugly in it, no power stations, no oil refineries or factories. But somehow we’d all be clothed and fed and comfortable. We’d all be living in the Countryside on our farms bartering our produce among our friends and no one would ever worry about money again.

I look back now on those sessions with Ted – who, I’m assured still believes every word of it - and reflect upon how shallow, impossible and childish the whole pipe-dream was. How flimsy the entire concept.

oooOOOooo

Last summer, in June, I went on a Father-and-Son camping trip with my 9-year old boy. He’s a keen cub-scout, and the troop leader, Toby, organises these things every year. They last from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening, in a woods a few miles from here, on a patch of land owned by the Scouts organisation. They are always hugely enjoyable events. I went on two or three a few years back with my older son, so I know the form, cooking over open fires, sleeping under canvas, and the days full of good-natured competitive activity. Toby always divides the group into two teams, and sets the boys – and their dads (when they can be dragged out of the beer-tent) - a series of games and challenges.

One of these games last year was “Card Run-outs”. This is how it is played: Toby had obtained 4 full sets of playing cards, two red and two blue. He and his helpers had pinned one full set of 52 red cards, and similarly 52 blue cards randomly onto the trees in the woods behind the tents. After lunch he told the boys that he had one pack of red cards, and one pack of blue cards on his bench in the control tent. The boys in the two teams were to go to the tent, pick up a red card or blue, depending on team, and then rush off into the woods to find its match. Once this was located, the boy was to bring the two seven-of-spades (or whatever) back to Toby to score a point. The first team to 52 points would win.

I’ll admit, this sounded a bit too much like mindless hard work to me, so I hung around with some of the other dads shooting the breeze over a couple of lagers while the boys charged around the woods. There were about 7 or 8 boys in each team, and the game was scheduled to take about an hour.

I ended up getting involved eventually because my son came over to me complaining that the Blues were cheating. After only twenty minutes, the reds had half-a-dozen cards found, but the blues were all finished.

It turned out that one of the boys on the blue team had had a brilliant idea. Whereas the red team were following instructions, collecting their card, and searching all the trees for that particular red card, ignoring all others, the blue team had a game plan. Every time they spotted a blue card at all, whatever card it was, they unpinned it from the tree and took it to a particular boy who had set up a control point down by the farmers gate. All the blue cards, once found, got put there, and so it was no trouble at all finding your particular match. Toby had been awarding points to the Blues every time they brought him a matching pair, seemingly suspecting nothing when a boy was handed a card and came back within a minute having found its twin.

I have to say, much to my son’s disgust, I rather thought the blue team deserved their win for the intelligence they had shown.

I’m an accountant by training, and I couldn’t help but reflect on what the blue team had done. Their achievement, in that game, was nothing short of having discovered, or perhaps invented independently at nine years old, the whole concept of the market-place.

Think about it a moment:

By setting up a control-point they had invented a means by which those people who were seeking a particular item could be put in touch with those people who had that particular item, with the minimum fuss and no tedious searching. Cards in this case, in a trivial games-playing context, but the principle is the same for any item..

Markets developed in human culture, not because “men’s hearts are wicked and their thoughts always tend to evil” but because they are an IMMENSELY useful means of getting buyers and sellers together. And all human cultures, no matter how primitive, have discovered this to be true. Markets exist because they are a good, efficient idea.

And once you have markets, a little bit of further development will see the emergence of money. Money – not a foul and abominable invention of Satan, but another hugely useful idea – a common means of exchange, and a store of value. All human cultures sooner or later invent money, too. It is just too useful an idea to do without.

And, of course, when you have markets, and when you have money, it is going to be the case that over time, some people will accumulate more of it than others. Hard-working people, perhaps just lucky people, or the children of already -rich people. You might not like it, but the fact that there are rich and poor people is not the fault of the idea itself.

oooOOOooo

So, back to Ted and his New Order Economy. I used the word “flimsy” to describe it a while back, and it was a carefully chosen word. Once you start to thinking in any depth about the silly ideas tied up with the whole JW Paradise Earth teaching, the concept quickly falls to pieces.

Ted’s barter arrangement would have collapsed in a matter of days, or we’d have all starved. Neighbours swopping baskets of apples with each other is no way to feed a population. Pretty soon the need would become apparent to take all your produce to a central location to swop it around among a larger population than just your immediate neighbours. Then you’d start to get travelling traders, and, in time, money. And then banks, and loans and interest rates and mortgages and eventually unit trusts and derivatives.

Change of tack: Think about animals for a minute. A lion that eats grass would, in fact, be a very different animal from the one we know today as a lion. Why those sharp teeth, and powerful jaws? Why the slashing claws and body strength? Grass doesn’t run away or fight back. Its whole digestive system – its whole body – needs a complete redesign to accommodate the new grass-based diet. It simply would not be a lion anymore.

Think about clothing. With no mills to make the cloth? Or sewing machines to make the clothes (no nasty factories making the sewing machines, remember!). Perhaps we’ll all be dressed in hand-knitted clothing made by our own families. Just thinking about that idea for a minute makes you realise that the New Order – without the benefit of the Industrial Revolution – would be a relentless life of drudgery, your whole life spent laboriously making articles by hand.

And so on, and so on.

When these ideas and doubts about the new system used to present themselves to me, I used to squash them from my mind. “Oh, it’ll be different – we’ll be perfect then, it won’t be the same at all. And besides Jehovah will use his active spirit to make it all work.”

Which, of course, is just a grown-up way of saying “God will use his Special Magic to make it happen” - which is exactly the fall-back children always use when THEY fantasise about pretend worlds. How did the Princess escape the Dragon? “Oh, the Wizard used his magic!”

It is, in fact, the exact same thing Witnesses always resort to whenever reality gets too close for comfort to any of their cherished ideas. Ever seen any of those threads here on JWD or H2O when AlanF or someone has just demolished some faithful JW’s idea that there is a scientific basis for the Flood? The typical dub reply goes: “Ah, but that’s arguing from mankind’s present knowledge of science. Jehovah can do anything, even if it is outside of our knowledge of science!”

In other words: Jehovah used his Special Magic to make it happen.

The day eventually dawns when you have grown enough, you’re mature enough to realise that God, or Jehovah, or whatever you call him, doesn’t (if he’s got any sense) actually want you to believe in him using His Special Magic to run a fantasy-world.

There’s a real world to deal with, as sensible, mature, adult people.

And I despair that Ted, who is now in his sixties, and millions of good-hearted people just like him, will never understand that basic fact of grown-up life.

Duncan

5

iraq tv guide

by jo_mancini in

jw
friends

tv guide for baghdad mondays: 7:30 the mohammed bunch 8:00 husseinfeld 8:30 mad about everything 9:00 suddenly sanctions 9:30 the brian benben bin laden show 10:00 allah mcbeal

tuesdays: 8:00 wheel of fortune and terror 8:30 the price is right if saddam says it's right 9:00 children are forbidden from saying the darndestthings 9:30 iraq's wackiest public execution bloopers 10:00 buffy the yankee imperialist dog slayer

wednesdays: 8:00 u.s. military secrets revealed 8:30 when kurds attack 9:00 two guys, a girl, and a fatwah 9:30 just shoot me 10:00 veilwatch

Duncan

Fame Al-Quaeda-my

I'm A Celebrity Suicide Bomber - Get Me Into There!

Ibiza Covered

(...and loads more on BBC Radio 4 comedy last week)

70

So What's Your Porn-Star Name? (Fluff, BTW)

by Englishman in

jw
friends

you take the name of your favourite pet as the first part of your porn-star name, then you take your mothers maiden name for your porn-star surname.. which makes me...george bennet, hmm fairly ordinary i suppose... but her ladyship becomes...poppy male...ah, it works sometimes then!.

this could be good.

englishman.

Duncan

Okay, it's not something I talk about much - but, back in the seventies when I was in The Business, I made twenty or thirty porno films under the name:

Dick Miles Long.

7

I'm Such A Smoothie.

by Englishman in

jw
friends

it's true.

i have hardly any hair on my body at all.

i once took weeks trying to grow a beard and tash, after 6 months i shaved it off and her ladyship didn't even notice.

Duncan

E-man

Just watch out that your brother doesn't go robbing you of your Birthright with the old "feel-this-dead-rabbit" trick with your old, near-blind patriarch father.

Duncan

edited to say - oops, wait a minute! That doesn't make any sense does it? It was the smoothe bloke who did the robbing, by employing the old "feel-this-dead-rabbit" trick.

Well, in that case e-man, why don't YOU do the Birthright robbing off your hairy brother. - Be a bit of a laugh, wouldn't it?

Edited by - Duncan on 13 February 2003 12:25:25

Edited by - Duncan on 13 February 2003 12:30:7