Jason P

1)Would you say you were at a major “turning point” in your life when you started attending cult meetings? YES 2)Did you feel you were in an undesirable state when you became interested in the teachings? YES 3)Had you tried other avenues to resolve a problem causing you tension in your life before resorting to the cult’s solutions? YES 4)Did the cult isolate you from your regular peer group? YES 5)If you expressed a different point of view from the group, did the group reprimand you and explain the proper way to think? YES 6)Were you discouraged from analyzing things for yourself, and encouraged to conform? YES 7)Were your decisions about individual actions taken away, and replaced with a strict regimen of group activities including group eating, sleeping, listening, talking, working and playing? NO 8) Do you think the public teachings were delivered with skill by polished, knowledgeable and dynamic speakers? YES Okay, "yes" or "no" is hardly fair with any of those answers so it's skewed. None of them are absolute "yes" or "no" answers, and the "no" one is a multiple-part question with some "yes"es. Hope that helps. I will say that most of the "yes" answers were not things that were demanded, but they sure as hell were expected and to not go along with them would have meant being outside of the "household."

Here's an unpopular suggestion: Maybe the rumors about her aren't true and he thought she was best for the job? I know that was the feeling out on the field at the time - some of us were aware of the rumors, didn't believe them, and thought that she was a very good choice. Edit: oops, you didn't mention the L word rumors. I'm so used to seeing it that I somehow thought it was there. At any rate, putting a woman in that spot was very good for appearance sake and I think he picked her because he thought she was the best. I don't see any conspiracy here. Why attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Of course, I tried to believe the Adam and Eve thing, the ice in space thing and the Peleg thing before logic took over as well, so what do I know?

Sample quote, not picking on any one person because it's a common thought in these parts: So what we're saying when we claim that every word was dictated by God but he chose to only reveal parts of it in each book is: God is a malicious prankster who chose to reveal His will in a series of confusing puzzles that apparently contradict each other at every turn BUT become quite clear if you start with the desired conclusion and work backwards, manipulating meanings of words in the process. And you have to find the one man of God to teach you how he manipulates the words and follow him until death or be weighed in the balances and found wanting. Yeah, I used to believe that too. Is this like the fundamentalists that claim God buried dinosaur bones all over the place to test our faith? Not only is this jokester deity making it virtually impossible to understand his will for certain, but he's throwing obstacles in our way to keep us from ever standing a chance. To hell with him then. I'm better off living by common sense and reason - suddenly I have a pretty good grasp of reality if I leave the fairy tales out of the equation. What kind of stupid god makes life more refreshing and liberating and peaceful and loving for those who refuse to believe in him? If he exists, maybe he should have made his will a little more clear and maybe there should be some actual undeniable benefit to following it. Other than a smug feeling of superiority, that is.

If I had wandered in here when this started, I would have said what Goey said. That should be the final word on the subject as far as I'm concerned. Not to defend the indefensible VPW, but I don't think he meant those teachings to be points of doctrine. He was merely trying to illustrate the "hand in glove" and "no contradictions" theories. I believe he was wrong as wrong can be, but I don't think he meant for these subjects to overshadow the importance of Christ. He was just a lousy teacher and rotten human being so it came out that way.

Absolutely not. I don't freely hand out love, respect, trust or forgiveness unless it's earned. I'm a man - I don't hand that stuff out just because it's expected or demanded (in fact, that's a good way to earn my contempt) or even requested. Earn it or stay the hell away. I forgive easily - all it takes is an admission of error, an apology and an attitude of change. In the case of TWI bigwigs, it would take a public apology (like here at Greasespot or... TWI's website?), but I would be fine with the bastards with just that little gesture. Until then, they can rot in hell. The people who got me in "the word" have apologized time and time again and they didn't even need to - they were just trying to help someone they cared about and were not responsible for any of the abuse. When they realized they were wrong they immediately took steps to change. They have my undying love and respect. I would love to apologize to those that I've gotten into "the word" and/or taught wrongly but they're still in and wouldn't hear it. When the time comes that they're ready, I'll be banging on their door asking for forgiveness. I expect the same courtesy.

I second every word. Once you get the basic ideas it starts to drag a bit but the basic ideas are very funny. I must be very jaded though because I didn't find it very offensive at all - no worse than an episode of South Park except for the profanity and a funny "sex" scene.

I've only heard it once so far but all I can say is holy shiiiiit. Anyone else heard Brian Wilson's "SMiLE" yet? Obviously, Wilson doesn't have the vocal range he used to have but I think it's a beautifully crafted pop album the likes of which hasn't been attempted in ages (to my knowledge, anyway, unless Jellyfish counts). I doubt if Brian Wilson has achieved what he's claimed he wanted to achieve for the last 30-odd years (I doubt if anything could live up to the legend), but this is as close to a real pop/rock symphony as anything I would care to hear. It's not up to the Beatles or even "Pet Sounds," but I'm glad I have it. The swirling vocals alone are gorgeous enough to recommend it but I also love the whimsical, shifting moods and textures and am very happy that the relatively sane Van Dyke Parks and Wondermints (one of my favorite pop - as opposed to rock - bands of the 90s) were there to help Wilson put it all in cohesive form musically and lyrically. Hopefully I won't get sick of it after a few listens and take back my recommendation but at this moment I love this album and think everyone should hear it. I imagine most of the online music shops should have samples - they won't give a sense of the whole but should give a sense of the production and musical values.

I think someone may have noticed I'm gone by now. Everyone I got into that pathetic little scam is still there, I'm sad to say. In fact, the last I heard of any of them they were more zombified than ever and climbing the ladder. Imagine the view...

Hotel? A normal sized living room should suffice nicely these days. But it would still be a 10 hour project to hear a 2 hour phone hookup. How nostalgic I'm feeling - I should have spent the first half of today doing setup for a meeting for 20 other people who didn't really want to be there either... with a crew of 16 or 17. Right about now we should be sitting in our uncomfortable folding chairs waiting for the phone hookup and thinking "in only five hours I can be home if no one calls a meeting after cleanup to blather about how important this day was. I wonder if the fish are biting? I wonder if I remember how to fish?" How spiritually dead we must be. What could we possibly be thinking to give this up?

And I posted at the same time as igout, who is much smarter on these things than I am. Do what he says if my whole "programs on partition D" thing causes confusion. My way works for me but it may not work for you. John's works for everyone every time.

Oops, sorry to mislead you, My3Cents. I also install programs and save all my Windows settings, favorites, templates and what have you to a folder in the D drive. You can also set the "documents and settings" folder on the D drive, which is where a lot of programs stash their settings and whatnots. However, some programs put hooks in the registry and operating system and any methods I know of completely saving them would be more complicated than reinstalling - to MY knowledge; I'm sure someone with more training has a better answer. It just occured to me that the programs I'm talking about here seem to be the ones most paranoid about piracy and activation so I don't know any way around that other than complete backups. As it is, with the way I set things up (programs and all settings on the D drive; all other files on E or F) I can reinstall the whole OS and the few programs (Such as MS Office) that need reinstalling in two or three hours. Sometimes fixing a disaster or trying to get the latest service pack working will take at least twice as long and you still have problems. I set up everyone's computers that way and teach them to save their pictures and music and other files to a storage partition (Move "my documents" to that partition and the battle's mostly won, even for the least experienced). I never spend more than an hour or two fixing the most horrible problems now... so far. Since this started with discussing SP2, I always give people a disc with SP2, a free firewall such as ZoneAlarm or Sygate that's easy to use and install and a free antivirus program (Avast is one that's easy for a beginner - I prefer AVG but get complaints that it's "too hard to use"). I instruct them (if the need ever arises to reinstall) to install SP2 and the firewall before connecting to the internet. Saves a lot of pain and suffering in the long run and I recommend keeping such a disc around. It's over 200 megs for the complete download but it takes maybe 20 minutes to install from a disc rather than waiting for a 90 meg download and getting hit with Blaster and other goodies while waiting.

I'm sure this is the most common answer: Anything I learned from TWI that is even remotely worthwhile would have eventually been learned elsewhere without the horrible mental and financial costs. All I got out of it was a dozen years down the drain and countless ruined relationships, lost opportunities and god knows how much financial destruction. The good news is that twelve years is a drop in the bucket compared to a whole lifetime and I now have such a finely tuned BS meter that the next 50 years should be smooth sailing. Saying anything positive about the experience would be tantamount to saying "well, I got hit by a bus but dammit, I learned to look both ways before crossing the road. Man, am I thankful for that!"

I noticed no performance differences at all the first time. I recently got a new motherboard and CPU, so I had the opportunity to install SP2 on a fresh XP install. I have never seen XP run so well or so smoothly before - once you shut up the security center if you're running things it doesn't recognize. I think it truly is an improvement in this case. My brother's computer was running like hell when he installed SP2 but he's done a million things to his machine (and had a zillion spyware and trojan attacks) and his registry had probably been reduced to semi-digested alphabet soup. I convinced him to do a clean install rather than spend the next ten years trying to fix his problems and his machine is purring beautifully. His and my machines are now the best-running ones I'm personally acquainted with now so I very highly recommend SP2 - especially for people who don't have the desire to become security experts just to surf the internet and manage their checkbooks. I suspect it depends on the abuse your OS has received and if a clean install is not out of the question that is probably the best way of ensuring trouble-free operation with SP2. I always set up machines so everything a person will want to keep goes to a separate partition because a clean install is so often the quickest and most effective way of solving so many problems: "You ran an unknown program you downloaded off Kazaa and your computer's barfing pea soup at you? No, I'm not coming over to fix it. Re-install and stop doing stupid things." That is so often a 2 hour project as opposed to days of sifting through all the accumulated muck to apply a band-aid. In short, rather than uninstalling it I would try it on a fresh install if possible.

Actually, in retrospect I wonder if it's such a terrible thing that Loy was picked. Maybe it wouldn't have crashed and burned like it has and many thousands more would be hurt if someone with more ability had taken over.

Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Complete waste of time, money, heart and everything I wasted on that terrible outfit. Anything worthwhile that can be gleaned from it can be learned much more easily and less painfully and in less time just by living life and applying common sense. Any good is absolutely completely overshadowed by the vile thought and behavior control and abuse. If you want to wreck your life, try heroin. It's cheaper, less destructive and easier to kick. Plus, you will find it easier to explain to others when they ask you what you wasted your youth on. Burn HQ to the ground and turn it back into a farm if anything will still grow in that corrupted dirt. That's the nicest thing I can say about the organization, and don't get me started on its sick, perverted, lying, diseased founder or his successors. And I'm in a good mood right now so I'm holding back.