Zixar

Having spent the better (worse?) part of three months playing the online game World of Warcraft, I thought it might be mildly profitable to share definitions of some of the peculiar idioms that young people are using on the Internet nowadays: ty - short for "thank you" tyvm - short for "thank you very much", pronounced "tivvum". LFG - Acronym for "looking for group" LF1M - Acronym for "looking for 1 more" WTS/WTB/WTT - Acronym for "want to sell" "want to buy" "want to trade" OMG! - Acronym for "Oh, my God!", used to express surprise or shock. WTF? - Acronym for "What the f__k?", used to express disbelief or disapproval. Also bowdlerized to stand for "Where's the food?" in instances where parental units may be looking over one's shoulder. ZOMGWTFBBQ! - Acronym used to express high levels of surprise. Apparently the 'Z' doesn't stand for anything. Woot! - Exclamation of happiness or approval, similar to "cool" "awesome" or "neato", except that "woot" has no real definition. 1337 or Leet - Bastardization of the word "elite", as applied to computer hackers or game players. Most of the terms in here are considered "leet-speak". teh - Deliberate misspelling of "the", as it's easy to make this typo when typing fast. Most often used in conjunction with another word, usually of incorrect tense, as an emphatic adjective. Also mildly imitative of international gamers who do not speak fluent English but whose native tongue includes gender-articles before words, like Spanish or French. "OMG! Server crashes are teh suck!" one/eleventy-one - Often used to facetiously simulate the finger slipping off the shift key when typing too many exclamation points: "I just reached level 60! WOOT!!!!!111!!1!11!!!!one!!!eleventy-one!!!11!" ninja - as a verb, to grab something you can't use or something someone else fought for. Very uncool. weaksauce - Exclamation or description of something feeble, distasteful, or undesirable. "I fought that elite dragonkin for an hour, but just as I kill him, some Night-Elf Rogue runs up to the chest it was guarding and Ninja-ed the plate mail I'd been farming for two weeks!" "OMG! Rogues can't wear plate! That is teh weaksauce!!!one!" gay or ghey - universal pejorative adjective, with misspelling to avoid auto-censors. nerf - to substantially reduce the power or effectiveness of something. The 1.10 patch seriously nerfed Hunters. I can't hit anything any more!" "OMG! That's ghey!"

I think they'll go out in this order: Tonight - Elliott Next week - Paris Next week - Katherine Finals - Chris wins, Taylor runner-up

And again, all religions have their nitpicks and rationalizations... QED. :)

Spoken like a true believer... As I intimated earlier, every religious belief has intricate defenses prepared for the challenges...even the belief that claims it is "no belief". Christianity, Islam, TWI, atheism, it's all the same thing at the meta-level. I could debate this at length, but it's late. The very short counter-argument to your proposition is that zero is still a number, and cannot be excluded from mathematics simply because it has some unique degenerate properties. Atheism is the zero of religion. And I didn't take it personally at all, Garth. (Tell Grif & Donut that siblings Scooter and Cleo are just fine, as are their younger relatives Stormy & Smudge.) God bless! Zix

My completely-unscientific ranking of last night would be: 1. Chris 2. Elliott 3. Katherine 4. Paris 5. Taylor 6. Kellie Like I said before, song choice will ultimately doom Kellie, and I think this is finally her week to go. If she'd watched the previous seasons of AI, she would have known that 'Unchained Melody' is one of Simon's favorite songs and that there was no way he would have ever liked her singing it. (Oh, btw, Kellie and the other finalists are not free to just quit the whole Idol thing and start their careers in Nashville or anywhere else. The top 12 have to sign contracts with the show's production firm so the producers can cash in first on the publicity their show gave the contestants. Immediately after the show's end, all twelve finalists go out on tour as a group for several months--I saw the Ruben Studdard/Clay Aiken group concert with the ex that year.)

Apparently all religions also use all sorts of canned phraseology and flat-out mistruths to deflect and misdirect... Examples: "TWI isn't a 'cult' (or a 'church'), it's a Biblical Research, Teaching, and Fellowship Ministry™!" (yeah, right. 'Tax dodge' doesn't sound as classy...) "Islam is a religion of peace." (yeah, right. Draw a picture of Mohammed saying that, and see what happens...) "Atheism is a religion like baldness is a hair color." (yeah, right. Non sequitur has as much value as a counter-argument as "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"...) Zealots abound... :)

I have no idea how the topic wandered so far afield, but since this is GSC after all, I'm not at all surprised. Suda: I certainly wouldn't presume to give you marital advice, but there is one thing I thought I'd pass along that might help put things in a different light. At its core, atheism is no different from any other religion. Let me repeat that--atheism is NO different from any other religion. Once you realize that, then dealing with them becomes no different than any other interfaith exchange. Instead of Jehovah, Buddha, or Allah, their chosen concept is named Nogod. (The trick is that while most religions require their deities' names to be capitalized, atheists insist theirs must only be capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, and with a space inserted into it after the second letter, always.) The parallels to other evangelical zealots become quite obvious then: --Always ready to profess their profound, unshakeable belief in Nogod. --Easily provoked to argument should someone challenge the belief in Nogod. --According to them, the world's problems would be greatly alleviated if everyone started believing in Nogod and behaving accordingly. --Resist all forms of public religious display or discussion, unless it furthers the belief in Nogod. --Unless it explicitly states or clearly implies the existence of Nogod, it may not be taught to their children. --While claiming to be logical and rational, any incompleteness to a scientific theory is minimized or ignored, since acknowledging there is still work to do might undermine belief in Nogod. Therefore, all interpretations that support Nogod are dogmatically taken as unassailable "fact", while all else is ironically claimed to be "bad science", usually in as smug and condescending a way as possible. --Parents who believe in Nogod are usually just as upset as any other highly-religious ones when their children decide to believe in something other than Nogod. --Historical prophets abound, although usually misquoted or misrepresented to support the adherent's current beliefs. (cf. Jesus, Mohammed, Charles Darwin) --Unless it gets you off of work with pay, all other faiths' holidays are ignored. There's tons of other religious parallels (what happens to you after you die, how should you be judged while you're alive, the treatment of male infants' foreskins, et cetera ad nauseam) but you get the idea. Me? I just refuse to believe in Nogod, but I don't care if others do, as long as they aren't trying to spend my tax dollars to get it taught in our schools, or trying to obnoxiously convert me. Happy Wednesday, Zixar

And our believing did not turn into our receiving. Rats. I thought it was a Law.

I actually thought the 3 bottom contestants sang better on the results show than they did on the performance show. Chris really needs to watch his song choices better. He's been blowing through on talent, but all it takes is one bad call one week and he'll be on the "what the hell happened?" bus with Mandisa. He should have picked a hit--he did great on "Under Pressure" in the medley, and he would have owned the whole competition if he'd done a high-energy, more popular Queen song like "One Vision" or "Hammer To Fall" instead. He was very lucky this week. Katherine McPhee should set her sights on Broadway instead of Hollywood. She'd be a real star on stage, but I doubt her viability as a pop idol. Elliott Yamin sang "Somebody To Love" like he'd never heard the song before. Paris has gotten a raw deal. She has been consistently great throughout the competition, yet winds up in the bottom half of the voting more often than not. She should at least go as far as the final 3. Kellie is as dumb as a bag of hammers, but she can sing. Song choice will ultimately kill her. Ace? Good grief, why is he still here? Kellie shows that looks and talent can compensate for having a single-digit IQ, but Ace only drew one of those. Bucky rarely sang anything on-key all the way through, but given the show's popularity in the country-music belt, it's not surprising he made it as far as he did. Taylor Hicks is the only one who seems genuine in every performance. It doesn't necessarily make him better than the rest, it just makes him consistently entertaining. My completely unscientific prediciton? Final will go down to Chris and Taylor, with Chris taking home the prize. But I'd go see either one in concert.

We've gone over this ground so many times before that you'd think it would finally sink in, to mix a metaphor. To boil it down to the fundament: 1) PFAL may have been the conduit for many people's lives to be changed for the better, but that in no way mitigates Wierwille's abuses. 2) VPW's sexual sins should not automatically invalidate PFAL, but a book is only as credible as the integrity of the author. Demonstrable plagiarism destroys his credibility as a teacher/researcher/author. The material may or may not be true, but Wierwille cannot be considered an ethical authority on the material. Therefore, unless it can be independently verified, PFAL remains suspect. It is by no means God-breathed--it fails its own criteria for that.

It's sad that you cannot see the irony inherent in your first sentence. I certainly didn't want to hear that the ministry I thought was different really was just another of the Jimmy Swaggart/Jim Bakker/David Koresh fronts for the sexual gratification of its leadership. I guess the real question you have to ask yourself is if you had lived 20 years ago, and Doctor Wierwille had you alone in his motorcoach, telling you that you were "spiritually advanced" enough to commit adultery with him, would you believe him? Would you blindly follow him regardless of what he said then? Something you may not be aware of was that back around the same timeframe, John Schoenheit, a member of the TWI Research Department, wrote a paper on what the Word says about adultery (which is pretty plain to see--there is not one recorded case of adultery ever being condoned, regardless of which spiritual leader it was). Instead of it being lauded and published in The Way Magazine as the latest triumph in TWI Research, the man was hounded from the ministry, accused of being possessed--and anyone who so much as admitted they'd READ the paper was booted, too. The text of the paper is here on GS, I believe. Go read it. This man worked side by side with Dr. Wierwille and Walter Cummins for many years in the Research Department and contributed major portions of research to books like Jesus Christ Our Passover and Jesus Christ Our Promised Seed. He knew what he was talking about, and plainly documented all of the verses, in best Wierwillian form. Now, it used to be that if the ministry had taught something one way, and discovered they were wrong later, they'd change the teaching. I liked that. (For example, prior to 1980, they taught that the Star of Bethlehem was something different, until Earnest Martin published The Birth of Christ Recalculated which demonstrated the September 11, 3 BC date used in JCOPS.) If the leadership were practicing error due to wrong believing, this adultery paper should have served as the "correctional epistle", even though it wouldn't have undone the wrongs of the past. It's the Word, after all, as VPW used to say, and arguing with the Word is pointless. But the ones with their hands in the cookie jar wouldn't drop the cookies. They didn't want to get in alignment and harmony with the Word, so they buried the paper and disgraced the author. This was the monster that VPW had created by his own foolish lusts. When the people are no longer led by godly leaders, they are drinking at broken cisterns that can hold no water. It should never have happened--if PFAL was as theopneustos as we thought it was. But it wasn't, and isn't. Believing in God and His Word is a good, noble endeavor. Blindly following a man's ministry that has been demonstrated to be the foundation of error is not. Even as VPW used to say, the truth needs no defense. Question it all, hold fast to that which is good. But in order to rightly-divide anything, you have to be willing to accept answers you don't like if they're the truth. The adultery paper is an excellent place to start. See if you can find any place that Schoenheit missed that actually condones adultery in the Word. If you can't, open your ears to these women. They have no reason to lie about this. They, too, just like you, would have followed Victor Paul Wierwille into hell itself--until the day they followed him into his motorcoach. The GreaseSpotters can be a cranky, opinionated bunch, that's true, and I'm certainly no exception. But the reason we're so hard on defenders of TWI is that we ALL were once as thoroughly and throughly convinced we were absolutely right as you are, and it took some very hard lessons learned to rip off the blinders we had smilingly allowed to be bolted to our heads. Loosen your bolts. You don't have to start believing in the trinity or anything, but you do have to realize that "God" is not spelled "vee pee double-ew". God bless you, Zix

Why do I get the feeling there's a heaping helping of "mark & avoid" coming our way in the near future?

I seem to recall a line in PFAL about figures of speech being used to emphasize or illustrate a point. Then again, something else takes the place of the absent Christ in this "administration", so who cares what he said anyway, right? I mean, since the Gospels are in the Old Testament, they're just "for our learning", which means we get to pick and choose what we want to believe from them and conveniently toss the rest when it doesn't support our pre-decided rightly-divided interpretations of the Bible.

Zshot makes a good point. In those places and times that Wayfers had good leadership, it would have been hard to believe that the ministry was corrupt at all. Wierwille did a far better job at keeping the abuses quiet than Martindale, which is why TWI flourished outwardly for many years. Once LCM's rants replaced VPW's slick sermons, the organization stopped circling the bowl and slid down the pipe.

75% of this thread is just arguing over a picture?

Dear CK, God bless you in the name of Jesus Christ! I read your thread on the persecution of VPW and thought I might give you my particular insight on the matter. Wierwille was a good salesman. He put on quite a show and convinced many people he was a sincere, godly man with his folksy, grandfatherly manner. Heck, after PFAL finished, I really wished I could have met him, although he had died the month before. The ministry I joined was nothing like the stereotypical "cult". The people in my Twig fellowship were a loving, caring bunch, and pretty much everyone I met was genuinely friendly and pleasant--provided they weren't Way Corps, but that's a different story. When I first got in, my little slice of TWI was pretty much exactly what it was supposed to be all along. I loved it. I moved into a Way home, went WOW the next year, Advanced Class, the works. But the further I moved up the Way Tree, the more problems I started having. Instead of being caring pastors and teachers, they started becoming legalistic bureaucrats. But I was naive, and chalked it up to people having their strengths and weaknesses, and didn't "think evil" of them--they were supposed to be "men of God" after all. When the ministry crumbled after the whole 1986 Passing of the Patriarch incident, I blamed Martindale and the others for obviously forgetting what "Doctor" had taught in the class. To me, Wierwille was the good guy, and Martindale had ruined the ministry I had come to love. So, I decided to stand on the "good" that I had been taught and distance myself from a ministry full of rotten leaders. The class had taught me enough to change my life, so it was obviously something to hold on to. Or so I thought, until 2001. Prior to then, if someone had said to me, "Martindale got caught sleeping with another man's wife," it would not have surprised me in the slightest. I always thought LCM was a total d1ck. However, when I first heard allegations of Wierwille's sexual abuses, I was in the same state of denial that apparently you and your folks are in. "Nah, couldn't be. Must be some psycho with an axe to grind--trick of the Adversary, possessed, whatever, but not nice ol' Doc Wierwille!" But then I came to the forerunner of GSC, a site called Waydale. I met people who had actually known and worked with Wierwille for years, and the story was all the same--sweet & nice for the cameras, controlling and abusive backstage. Then the horrible truth came out--there were actual victims of Wierwille's sex abuse here, as well as those with friends and family members who had been abused. They weren't psychotic, they weren't rabid deprogramming freaks, they were actual women who told the same story--of how VPW would get women alone, mostly in his motorcoach, and then coerce them into having sex with him. Now, even in the most generous benefit of the doubt, perhaps Wierwille's sexual appetites could be labeled an "addiction" or some sort of affliction he couldn't help--even though that would not excuse it in the least. The problem is that it wasn't confined to him--he TAUGHT his senior leaders that it was justifiable to commit adultery. That is where he loses all possible slack from anyone. When one man's immoral "weakness" becomes ministry dogma, that ministry is no longer following the true God. "Well, what about the good things he taught? Even if he was a predator, surely that doesn't negate the Bible he taught, right?" Wrong. In order for Wierwille to do what he did, he had to set the stage in PFAL. He got everyone hooked with his "look it up if you don't believe me" preaching that most people just started taking his word for things and not noticing the curve balls he was sailing over the plate. One of the glaring errors was his statement that the Bible said "every woman belonged to the King"--which it simply does NOT say, anywhere, nor does it imply anything of the sort. But we all just let it slip, 'cause, hey, it's VPW, and he wouldn't lie to us, right? Sure he would. He lied to us from the COVER of the orange book. It has been documented that many of the things Wierwille claimed he wrote were in fact taken from other authors' works, notably B.G. Leonard, Kenyon, and E.W. Bullinger. So, while there may have been some wonderful insight included in PFAL, an honest researcher would have quoted his sources--and he didn't. He took credit for it all. So, to paraphrase Wierwille himself, if he lied to us here, we might as well chuck the whole thing away. He practiced error, but what's much worse, he taught error. PFAL itself showed what happened to the early church when that happened--and yet none of us believed HE would ever do such a thing. You don't have to stop believing in God, nor even stop studying His Word--even if you use what VPW taught in PFAL to do so. But you might want to look really closely at what Jesus actually taught about forgiveness. He was really kind and loving--except when it came to false teachers. Jesus was pretty harsh on them--"better a millstone be hung around his neck and cast into the sea" than to lead astray. Jesus forgave the woman taken in adultery, and he may have forgiven Wierwille his countless adulteries, but when a minister uses his position to violate a follower, (that's not mere adultery, that's tantamount to rape,) and when he knowingly teaches error to others, odds are that that guy is going to wind up in the millstone line. Please don't be put off by some of the negative responses you've gotten here, but please also understand that some of the posters here are much closer to the horrors of TWI (especially the legalistic Gestapo-like nightmare it became in the 90s) and are understandably less-than-cordial to newcomers who would defend VPW without knowing the full story. There is plenty of eyewitness testimony to be had here, though. Get to know these folks, and be respectful of their positions, even if you don't agree with them. You'll at least have a better foundation on which to judge your opinions of V.P. Wierwille then. God bless! Zixar

Because Satan has his own fistful of spiritual Monopoly money and gets to spend it, too? Since you're not dead, starving, or homeless, it may be that God really IS taking care of you--just in the most efficient manner instead of the flashiest. Perhaps being promoted would subject you to new stresses you never even thought of, took you away from your family for extended periods of time, throw you into a higher tax bracket, whatever. As Garth Brooks sang, "Some of life's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers." God bless! Zix

Yeah, I didn't have my new password so I had to re-register, then I found the switchover email and was able to rejoin as me... (mods, you can delete the ZixarReturns account now, thanks!)

BTW, on the results show the following night, Chris Daughtry and Ryan Seacrest talked about how the version of "Walk The Line" he did was originally done by Live, although it was just a couple of sentences, and easy to miss.

Despite being needlessly vulgar and iconoclastic, South Park is frequently a sharp social commentary. The whole theme of Part 1 was eloquently summed up in one line--you may say you BELIEVE in free speech, but will you DEFEND that right? Or just bury your head in the sand? If riots start over CARTOONS, the world seriously needs to reconsider the continued worth of the rioters. Rudyard Kipling put it disturbingly presciently in his poem "MacDonough's Song" (from the public domain) WHETHER the State can loose and bind In Heaven as well as on Earth: If it be wiser to kill mankind Before or after the birth— These are matters of high concern Where State-kept schoolmen are; But Holy State (we have lived to learn) Endeth in Holy War. Whether The People be led by The Lord, Or lured by the loudest throat: If it be quicker to die by the sword Or cheaper to die by vote— These are things we have dealt with once, (And they will not rise from their grave) For Holy People, however it runs, Endeth in wholly Slave. Whatsoever, for any cause, Seeketh to take or give, Power above or beyond the Laws, Suffer it not to live! Holy State or Holy King— Or Holy People’s Will— Have no truck with the senseless thing. Order the guns and kill! Saying—after—me:— Once there was The People—Terror gave it birth; Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth. Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain! Once there was The People—it shall never be again!

"When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." In other words, everyone's perceptions are colored by their beliefs, even scientists. If you think there's global warming, you'll tend to interpret data to support your belief. It's not supposed to happen with the rigors of science, but it does. Beliefs get reinforced by repeated exposure without question. The media keep repeating "global warming" so often that people accept it as fact regardless of the data. (It's nothing new, though. Newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst started a war with Spain by publishing overembellished stories about the USS Maine being blown up in Havana harbor, Goebbels manipulated the Nazi media to paint Jews as evil, etc.) The rule of thumb with ANY type of rising hysteria is: look at who stands to profit if the dire predictions are true. There's almost ALWAYS a political agenda behind any hype. Who stands to gain from fanning the flames of global warming? Penn & Teller did an episode of their Bulls**t! series on environmental hysteria that exposed a lot of the hypocrisy and non-existent science behind the various Earth-first movements in the name of furthering a political anti-corporation agenda. Michael Crichton's novel "State of Fear" also goes into depth about the inconclusiveness of all the climactic data being hidden by political activist groups. In other words, if you're REALLY nervous about something you've heard in the news, step back for a moment and ask yourself if you're being manipulated. Yes, terrorism is a problem, but unless you live in one of the largest cities the odds you'll be caught in a terrorist act are less than your getting killed in a car crash. Yes, pollution is a problem, but a single volcano spews more crap into the atmosphere over the course of one eruption than all of the aerosol cans ever produced in all of history. Yet, the left wants you to believe the Earth is goingto be incinerated by corporate greed, while the right wants you to believe there's a bloodthirsty terrorist hiding in everyone's backyard. One more thing--part of the climate trends are based on temperature data over the past hundred years. In 1903, Coca-Cola still had cocaine in it. Thermometers were red alcohol in hand-blown glass, yet supposedly they were accurate enough to support doomsday theories based on trends of a degree or two up or down in global temperature? The jury's still out on a lot of things, folks. Don't panic just yet, ok? :) God bless, Zix

Jesus, this place never changes... :)

Okay, the final ballot for the Halo Machinima Awards is now live, and my show, Sponsors vs. Freeloaders, is very well represented among the final nominees. Episode 7 got nominated in most of the major categories, (as well as Episode 6 and 2 in a couple), two of our actors got nominated for Best Male & Female Performance (Laird & Katyara) and we're in the running for Best Series, too. Unlike the nomination process, you get to vote for one choice in every category, but you only get one vote, and it's confirmed by email. Anyway, if you are inclined to vote for us, here's the link: 3rd Annual "Rockets On Prisoner" Halo Machinima Awards Thanks!

Jim, I'm about as serious dense as an icebreaker on Lake Superior in below zero temperatures trying to keep the shipping lanes open. But the ice B.S. is getting pretty thick and so the folks at port gullible may just have to wait til spring for their precious cargo overhyped quackwater to arrive. Fixed. A quick recap: Oxy-water supposedly adds oxygen to the bloodstream, despite the fact that oxygen isn't very soluble in water, and has no real way of entering the bloodstream until the water reabsorption phase in the intestines. There is no discernible increase in blood oxygen levels detectable by pulse oximeters after drinking this stuff, but that's supposedly because all this oxygen is somehow winding up in the blood plasma instead of being attached to hemoglobin in the red blood cells. (Never mind the fact that hemoglobin carries oxygen and carbon dioxide via two different systems, and so any increase in the amount of oxygen in the plasma would be picked up by oxygen-depleted hemoglobin and raise pulse-ox levels just the same as breathing pure oxygen would. Doesn't happen.) Carbon dioxide, the waste gas collected and exhaled, is over twenty times more soluble in water than oxygen is. If oxy-water had any beneficial effect at all, the reverse would be true twenty times over for drinking anything with dissolved carbon dioxide in it. Since people aren't dropping like flies after drinking a Coke or a beer (or several), the alleged "lymph" transport of dissolved gasses, if it even exists, must be so horribly inefficient as to render the amounts that actually reach the bloodstream to be negligible. There's no medical conspiracy to keep oxy-water suppressed. If something so simple had any sort of proveable beneficial health effect, you can bet the big soda companies would jump on it with both feet and make Oxy-Pepsi just to sell a few more supertankers of sugar water to the easily-led. (Hey, if they actually made "Pepsi Clear", they'll try anything to sell more fizz.) Now, will it actually hurt you to drink it? Probably not. Will it actually help? Depends on how susceptible one is to the placebo effect, but so far, there's no credible science to back up the claims, and it would be extremely simple to prove if it worked. All signs point to "no". Caveat emptor, caveat imbibor.

Yes, Sudoku puzzles are quite entertaining since they're not a trivia contest like the average crossword puzzle.