Ham

Happy birthday friend! Hope it is a good day for you.

I was in from about 1975 until.. about 1997. I probably sat through PFAL.. hmm, maybe fifty, sixty times.. I had the number figured out once. The BEST thing I got out of it was an understanding of a few figures of speech, and went beyond what was taught in pfal.. I'm the only one in my literature class who knows what hypocatastasis is.. could have gotten the same results just buying a book.. :)

T-Bone, I don't think it was a sedative that was applied to some people's conscience, it was a club. Feel really, really bad about something you said, or did? Well, "no condemnation". "Don't you DARE try to touch MY righteousness.." I got that reply a few times from a simple inquiry, in love. I think we were trained to beat the snot out of ourselves with our own righteousness.

Yeah, a servant. To be beaten into subjection. Worked for Hitler and gang. Honestly, after leaving der vey, I've apologized to MY conscience..

Oh the horrors..

"Smart as a brick" may apply here. Many of us trusted our lives to people who couldn't balance a checkbook.

I wonder how many t bones and filet mignon his friends may have helped themselves to before the dust settled there..

Naw, not here.. I think he is in one of the New England states somewhere. At least running a limb. Oh, I just remembered. "They" did put a four hundred pound rock in charge of "research", did they not?

Hey, if it's marble, I would put it in charge of "research"

Hmmm. I have a pet rock. Genuine West Virginia river rock, weighs about three hundred pounds. I'm thinking about getting it ordained..

Well, one thing.. Any bizarre, strange or out of the ordinary thing I've told anybody about myself on the internet here, you may take comfort with the knowledge that it is one hundred percent true.

Yeah.. no graffitti in Midland either.

well, it is kinda "purty"..

Is that the big fish pic that "got away"?

The few they "let" really get on the internet. I think a couple of them are missing a few brain cells. Maybe it's something in the water there.. I personally don't see how they can read people's first hand accounts, and not think logically, analytically, or emotionally, for that matter. They just report.. In other circles I think they call them bueracrats.

In his dreams at best.. heheh. Well, no brain, no memory. Last thing he was aware of, he lost his head.. Like a friend of mine, he says he got hit on the head, the next thing, he was married..

Actually, that is what happens. but the short pleasure does not last very long.. but without a real brain (remember, it has been removed.), there is nothing to remember.. "I went to the bar last night, met the cutest girl, but dang, I can't remember a dagone thing.."

Actually, with the head removed, and no restraining influences of logic or anything, biology says that the male mantis body still has some part of the central nervous system that will copulate to no end, and the female mantis finds "the best sex of her life".. If only that would work on the human male..

as long as they didn't use the laser thingy to map your retinas or something, I think you'll be fine

I'm suprised der vey didn't get more of an "honorable" mention in all of this.. I think a 4.3 GPA may be a slight exageration.. I thought the highest you could get is a 4.0.

nyunknown, I think that was the whole point. Many (or maybe I should say I) allowed logic, instincts, good sense, and if you want to call it that, a sixth sense, get beat into submission under a cloud of emotional religious conviction, hoopla, false logic and posturing. They guys that ran the place were NUTS. But vic could turn on the charm, sob about the "greatness" of the word one minute, and chew the leg off a fellow behind the scenes the next.. On stage they could appear pretty believable.

Probably think that just makes them all so "special". We're the few, the strong, the Marines.. whoops, wrong commercial.. The few, the duped, and those brow beaten to stay because if they leave they'll be sacrificed by the rest of their family.. Honestly, some of them ARE the strongest I know of.. I don't know how well I'd fare, sitting and listening to the same drivel the thousandth time. Maybe that's what hell is, listening to some joker rehashing loy's material hours on end.

If I read Oak's observation correctly, Pagans behaved a lot better than vic.. :)

sorry friend, I should have put a warning label on this thing.. :) I'd like to see what Freud would do with this bunch.. Honestly, to me, it looks like they want to be "mommy". Of course, the motherhood is pretty bizarre. Want the "kids" (some of them well over forty) to stay two years old and dependent for the rest of their lives.. Accountable to the mommy figure, for what they eat, where they go, how they get there, and even- when they go potty. But what's really twisted, to show the days and times they have scheduled sex in.. that is really disgusting. Oh, "we don't do that any more, we're a little nicer.." hardly an admission of guilt or wrong. Besides, I've never personally seen these mandates reversed. I'm REALLY GLAD I never went on staff. I really thought it was a dream job of sorts, but I never got in. Thank God for the "little" blessings.

Well, don't beat yourself up.. I think your smarts grew back..Same for me. I did/believed/practiced some pretty ingorant stuff.. :) Like a scene from an old Michael Douglas film, "welllll, less throw another brick on the fire.." Mixed bag was my OVERALL experience too. But the last bunch, I wonder how they managed to survive through adolescence..