socks

Wondered about that. Good idea. The facts will speak for themselves, when more are known I guess. Not really a clear "story" to follow here, although the fact of people risking and then losing significant amounts of money coming from retirement funds and home mortgages is tragic. Everything went up and down the last few years, a little or a lot (with some exceptions but overall). The prognosis isn't in nor the recovery forecast although it's clear that high risk and big greed have been factors. So anyone marketing a big return, low risk money maker - you'd have to question it, look at it carefully and proceed cautiously. These people on their site sound like they did. Perhaps this was marketed as a way to protect against the shifting going on last couple years, tighten up your funds in a "secure" portfolio. . Given the investment climate of the last few years most people wouldn't take on risk without a great deal of confidence and trust both in the investments themselves and who ever's managing their portfolio. Everyone makes mistakes, investor and investee. Investmenets are doing good, everyone's happy, yae, we like this then not so much when the money goes down. That's what happens. This doesn't sound like that's the entire story here. Face value it sounds like money was put into one investment system to pay for another. It also sounds like communication to his customers - those whose money he was managing - was sketchy at key times that it appears money was in flux and ROI was tanking - "ducking and hiding". Kinda weird but fits a lot of stories we hear about on the News. . Not a good scenario if it was your money.

Good point. That guy Rico "The Mouth" that talks for the Way strikes me as a complete bonehead. Again, welfare doesn't come free Ric'. Somebody's paying for it. Talk about lipstick on a pig.

But there's lots of dik heads like this guy pushing get-rich investment schemes. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. The Way itself has squandered the investment of the most important resource they had - their people. The actual lives, intelligence and committment of the real living human beings who built the place. Who would possibly think they could influence any honorable or sustainable investment of anything else?

"I find it ironic that they brag on their masterful command of the law of believing, that brings them a limitless supply of abundance and meanwhile they tap into every resource they can find that is set aside for the poor." This just in - a wikipedia source quoted but all PELL documentation uses similar language: "Because Pell Grants are targeted toward students from low-income families, recipients are often used by researchers to count low-income students and to indicate the economic diversity of the student body." Apparently for Wayfers God meets your needs through the grants and taxes given and paid by others (the Way's income is tax-exempt and I doubt any paid staff family contributes much to the federal tax fund yearly) All that filthy unbelieving lucre for the taking, it must be hard to say no. I agree that there's nothing wrong with using grants and federally funded programs. I believe the assumption is that those who benefit early will pay into the system that gave them a leg up, later. Nothing's free, someone somewhere is always paying. The middle class earners and payers have been continuously and methodically priced out of most of these programs - once your income hits a bracket and you're doing "well", many if not all of these programs become well out of your reach. Meanwhile COL goes up and up and income's become flatter and flatter. "Abundance"? If a man doesn't work, he doesn't eat so goes the saying. Apply that principle to tax funded grants, gifts and scholarships and the result is easy to see - if you're not contributing and you don't intend to and disrespect the source of of the goodies, keep your hand out of the cookie jar. Law of Believing? I'd expect they'd be rolling in abundance with 3 chickens for every pot - one to eat, one to save and one to give away. Instead they seem to be scrounging for giveaways. Doesn't make sense. Doesn't anyone work, earn salaries, save money, hire employees, share with others, plan for a moderately wet if not rainy day? In Way World someone else is always paying. For everything. Every slice of bread, gallon of gas and mouthful of breakfast lunch and dinner, the oven that it cooks on and the roof that keeps the snow off their heads while they sleep on a full tummy. So yeah....they may be no more hypocritical than any other gang of freeloaders but they should at least have the dignity to not celebrate it. The Way could have pursued any number of financial options over the years to benefit their employees as well as their members. They just don't give a s--t, it's plain as the nose they bit off to spite their face.

Succulent point So_crates. If I were to compare the bombing of an abortion clinic and the people and kinds of activities the Way organized and endorsed I can see a major difference. It's been contended over the years on GS that the Way harbored aggressive intentions, and that members and participants were in some dumbotic mental and emotional state that would have put them a blink away from picking up arms and attacking others and even themselves. I can't deny some of the nutty anti-social behavior and tendencies, the trendiness of themes and rhetoric and posturing but nothing where anyone would or went on the attack. It just never happened. I don't know anyone that I knew then or now who would have done such a thing. If one were to say the ground was laid for it, that the potential was always there, I just don't agree. A case can be made hooking up pieces of this and that and making an argument that sound completely plausible but if it was that plausible it would have happened, there was certainly opportunity.

Life could be viewed through the filter of a "dice throw" regardless of what board game we choose. Chance is always a factor - put another way, we don't know what we don't know. Risk has to always be factored in to any human endeavor. I've heard Christianity marketed as "the only sure thing" going. Depending on what sect and doctrine one pursues, yes I can see that case being made. "if" implies risk - recognizing it isn't wrong or even scarey - risk recognized can be planned for. The bible speaks of "hope" - if (lol) I factor out any failure rate the "hope" simply means by implication that which hasn't been realized yet - future, but expected. So - example: I save a dollar a day and want to have 10 dollars in 10 days. I can say "I hope to have 10 bucks in 10 days" knowing that I will, all things being hmm equal or something and that I get a dollar a day to save and do save it, etc. There's some risk there, looking at it that way - maybe I won't get the dollar or won't save it when I do. But if I do and I save it, I'll have a stack of 10 bucks in 10 days. If I have 10 dollars in one stack and move one buck a day into stack two, I can say "I hope to have 10 bucks in 10 days" in that stack with a very reasonable expectation that I will, in fact, have that 10 bucks in stack two in 10 days. They were already in stack one and I resolved to move them to stack two. If (I'm killn' meself) I do, they will be and yeppers, I'm going to and I did. Coffee's on me, compliments of the stacks. The bible unfolds the future in the same way as the last example - there are certain gimme's, things which it says have been, are and will be. In that way one could say that everything, all of existence already is - viewing it from a separate outside point of reference if one could - it all exists as a single continuous event, a whole. When say a "John" has the future revealed to him and he writes about it - what is it he's seeing, or saw? The future as it will be - or as it "is"? It hasn't happened yet, it can't really be seen from a human vantage point. To see the future in the form of an event implies that the events that have to occur for that event to occur will in fact occur. I, with some risk of "if" can move bills from one stack to another and predict the result 10 days from now - if there's no "if" involved then the outcome is predictable and reliable and can be said to be "known" and planned or. . This doesn't mean everything, all of it including our part, is planned out or "destined" to be (that would be a separate issue involving process) - it simply means that as the past was so will be the future. It will be what it will be, we simply can't see it in the same way as we see the past or (sort of) the present. "God' could be understood within this framework as someone where there is no "if" or risk within His decisions and actions - when God says "I will" for instance the failure rate would be zero. Were God to say "I will if" or "I will when" other things become involved. "Time" which can be a very abstract concept can be understood easier this way I think, a quality of existence as it is perceived and recognized. Digging into it at any single point, like "now" I would say that as existence, "time" (recognition) for want of a better word, moves forward those events unfold and the future becomes what it has been said it will be....if somone had described them from that outside reference point. If I were looking back from some future point I'd see it as a series of events that occured as they did - looking forward into the future I could see them as events moving along their stack path, not altogether separate from each other and only seen so when viewed individually. "If"? Or when.

"Why is it a hard saying that the lying publicity was given the benefit of the doubt by some in authority?" The FBI? I guess because it wouldn't take much intelligence to see that the Way was not an organized threat. I don't doubt that they might have shown up for a time based on some of the activities like the out door stuff but I have never heard from anyone I'd consider reliable that they did. And I'd have to assume they'd have quickly realized from their observation that the average Wayfer would prefer to talk your ear off about the bible, as opposed to shoot it off. Lots of posturing but in my experience not a lot of Wayfers who would do much more than that. Perhaps another example of our tax dollars at work during a time when the accounts were flush enough to fund such a waste of time. I also don't get the people who felt everything VPW sneezed at was "revelation". Some people want to believe someone else always knows better than they do, for whatever reasons.Wouldn't that be nice?

I don't subscribe to a logical premise that "because the Way said it/taught it/looked at it once" it must therefore be wrong, or if and even if it isn't it would have been wrong if they'd so much as looked at it because VPW and therefore anyone or anything that looked at, saw once or listened to ever even a little bit of what he taught or anyone that said what he said or would have if he'd had the chance to say it and so it would therefore by virtue of association and infiltration be forever tainted and consequently to be avoided as if it were from the Devil's own iPod. But yeah, I wouldn't toss that cake out simply because he didn't like cake nor would I eat it simply because he didn't like it. Any knee jerk reaction to cake will be messy at the least and that just won't cut it. The cake.

"LCM went on and on about how the devil spirit realm was trying to take over the ministry by people refusing to change their personal habits and becoming contaminated. And how people will become indignant when reproved and say I'm righteous who are you to tell me this or that. This was LCMs rationalization for the debt purge, the homo purge, the planning your day to 15 minute increments, reporting back...all the control measures because we gotta keep the household clean for Jesus, y'know." LCM became a first rate horse's as s over the years and received full certification after taking over for VPW. Comparing his M.O. with anything else is like comparing the Three Stooges act to a football's team playbook. Based on "principles" that allowed for any flight of fancy to become his latest revelation from god he developed a history of activity that would rival a bee's flight pattern for twists and turns. What made sense to him was what he made make sense to himself that week. It's misguided to compare scriptural guidance with his hide-and-seek games. Of course he diverted attention to things that didn't amount to a pile of pig swill while screwing other's wives and living like a fatted calf off the usury of the sweat of others. He didn't concern himself with the work of a pastor, teacher or minister, he beat people over the head with directives designed to denigrate and demote anything that might have turned into real prosperity and value while promoting carefully crafted campaigns that wouldn't be worth the virtual paper it takes to describe them were it not for the fact that they remain even still today the lowest of the lowest points in his putrid past of pilfering and plundering the good names, character and virtue of those who, given even the smallest amount of help and assistance one might expect from a "ministry" that claimed to hold forth the Word of God, could have benefited from that very help had it been there. I could never compare his misguided and maniacal "home purge" with any kind of honest, intelligent and scriptural evaluation. He was an idiot waiting for the next bomb to drop that he was never going to see coming because he was too busy strutting and dancing. I would never confuse what the bible teaches with what he did. Doesn't make sense. Because he was a spiteful small minded toad doesn't mean that making decisions and judgment based on clear teaching from the bible wrong.

"There were. They were watching us at least since pfal '77, which happened before Jonestown. They watched us at LEAD HQ. They did think we were going to start attacking places with guns. I guess we weren't that kind of cult. Beliefs are one thing; terrorism is quite another. " So yeah, I'd like to know what kind of documentation there was or is or could be or might be that would substantiate that claim. Mind you I'm not a rank unbeliever, just a 1/2 stank inquirer. I would like to know who started this claim if anyone does know or where they first heard it - johniam, you sound like you heard it somewhere - mind sharing where? I was in and around the Way and the Way Nash from since the 3rd aeon and through to the start of the 5th Tri-Wars epoch, transitionally speaking and I don't remember ever hearing about FBI agents or their operatives being anywhere like the Way's properties or activities. Apparently they were - anyone have any eye's on viewings? Reliable second-hand so and so told you? Say on, please. VPW drank the 'Buie - today I'd call it mildly buzzed. I don't agree with the claim here that's been made over the years that he was an alcoholic, to me that's ridiculous and counters my own experience with him. He drank the Liquor of Locusts, Drambuie and liked it - I've had it a few times over the years, stuff tastes like old cough syrup a bee pee d in, I mean, it's not good. Rusty Nail - not so bad but straight - nasty. So yeah - if he'd had a drink or two or three, you could smell it, no way you couldn't. He didn't ever hide it that I recall, or at least that wasn't my impression of his drinking habits. I don't like to drink all that much and only under certain circumstances - the overall effect it has doesn't lend itself to having sharp mental acuity or judgment - and yeah I'm a real buzz kill on that, cus I see that most people when they drink even some, a little, just a couple, socially, no-biggie-style drinking......they really don't see that in themselves. Most of the time it's not an issue, people havin' fun. In VPW's case he probably should have drank less but I don't think he drank more than most people I've known over the years - but again I think most people that do drink at all drink too much and more than they should. this isn't off topic by the way IMO cuz NOTHING tastes worse then Drambuie. Take a pile of turtle dung, mix it with week old grapefruit juice, add a few sprigs of mint and a dash of regurgitated licorice then let it sit in the sun for two days - stir well and pour........that would taste better I'm sure.

Sounds about right, more or less the same. Peter Gabriel sang it "And my heaven will be a big heaven, and I will walk through the front door....Big Time!" A sense of urgency and emergency is crafted when there's a threat, an attack. Enemies make good fuel for any effort. Food chain, cycle of life stuff. Baby cubs learning to make the kill, learning what's food and what isn't. Drama - humans seems to relish drama, the big ups and downs, the challenges, the endless hours of preparation for what - ? If nothing, we seem to want something. When all the wars have been fought and all the bullets fired the soldier returns to till the ground and hoist his babies overhead in joy and to wonder - will I be needed again? And if I am, will I be ready? And readiness becomes the drill of the day. Ready and waiting. Dunno. FBI? How would one know - tall guys in black suits and sunglasses? That's half they guys in the Way. What would they be looking for? They missed the good stuff, if they ever were there. Doesn't say much for them IMO, if they were. Who knows, maybe some intern 10 years from now will open a file and see pictures of people sitting on chairs in a tent and wonder....what was this all about?

FBI agents? Does that stand for Fat Butt Independents? This rumor circulated faster than a Snopes report on holy water healings. Pervasive and invasive into the psyche, for sure. "It makes sense" - that kind of rationale may have served to enliven it. Were there? Wouldn't surprise me, perhaps once or at a time of some event, etc. A lot of Wayfers loved to shoot their mouths off, embellish, put on a bad face, stuff like that. Look at Craig. That AOS jumpsuit - enough reason right there. Investigate that boy. It wouldn't surprise me but it doesn't give me a lot of respect for the capabilities of the FBI - they missed a lot and apparently never found anything worth investigating or re routing through other agencies. Guess the Way pond was really just a pond and those really were ducks. How's the line go from the movie Jeremiah Johnson - ? "Some tribes get their greatness from how great their enemies be....".........something like that? Course ol' Johnson was getting his hair trimmed every time he turned around for awhile there but that makes a point worth considering - having the FBI taking note makes everything more important, more dire, more urgent. "We must be doing something right - they got the Big Guns pointing at us".... Course they are reported to take interest in things that wouldn't capture the attention of a 5 year old unless you strapped chocolate to it but...just sayin'.... Dunno....maybe it is time to get down out of these mountains, go to a city....

When maybe's more than enough... <br> <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cm2YyVZBL8U?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

"Let's just wait and see what comes out of the river" :wacko: Deliverance

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SswnbpA2qZ0?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Aaah, nice. Love that Crimson King! <br> <br> A band I discovered several years ago and every couple weeks I gotta feed that Jones and get some of this stuff. You can get their CD, sometimes, and while they don't tour and have declared they don't wish to, I wish they would. The Garden Weasels - "Piece of Your Crown". <br> <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qFE7g2tuE4Q?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <br> <br> "Sure Fire Love", a aong that says, well, really says it all. <br> <br> <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rtPJM45MLpQ?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

"You take a piece of paper napkin, dump a bunch of cayenne into it, fold it around the pile and swallow." That'll blow a hole in your stomach, for sure. Not a great idea.

The Deadster's have a good chunk going there Grouch! <br> <br> When it's time to brown bag it down the avenue there's no one even close to my main man, Mandel...combing out the dandruff of the gods with an old tune that still has the whiff of fresh trim............bad horsie! <br> <br> <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/eGxQQIgEmgk?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

There can be only One...

The true breakfast of champeens: <br> <br> <iframe src='http://www.fancast.com/tv/Saturday-Night-Live/10009/594868798/Little-Chocolate-Donuts/embed?skipTo=0' width='420' height='382' scrolling='no' frameborder='0'></iframe>

I found millet enjoyable and tasty! Still eat it from time to time. Did someone say sorghum? Figpep was to me a vile beverage. It can be used added to other stuff and it's reasonable. By it's alonesome, smelly and blarghy. Peeps though - Breakfast o' champions baby.

I dunno - back stroke Twinky? I need to apply my anchor-like attention span to the topic at hand. Strokes can be kinda hard to track, small ones. Confused thinking, garbled speech, a momentary lost feeling - where was I - what was I doing? I feel that way a lot more now than when I was younger so who knows? This could be the result of some synaptic misfire posing as a post. I dunno, reading later I wouldn't discount that about some of this stuff. People often experience minor strokes and go on in normal activity - if there are effects it won't be seen until later. In the back of my mental drawer I do recall that VPW had had a stroke, heard about it from friends at the Way Nash. The last year I saw him - around '84 he appeared not so good. I have no idea when it happened, don't remember. I do remember his health had been deteriorating by 1980 and he bounced back and forth over the next few years was my impression, remembered now. On the important topic of Chair Stringing - oh yes, sooooo essential to good spiritual hygiene. I've seen it used many times in hotels, post-Way years by set up crews, banquet staff, etc. I don't know who originated it - probably someone who had more important tasks to complete and wanted a way to get that one done fast. It's a reasonable method for getting a straight row of something. It's a quick 'n' dirty way to do it. It's a low-fi method, slightly better than eyeballing them but no good if someone's going to follow up with a micrometer. Line 'em up, get 'er done, move on to the next task - that's the idea. I know - I've been in, planned for and supported 100's of business/work/training/presentation meetings in this post-apocalyptic-Way-Gone life I enjoy. Less so now - however it's done, it's done and once it's done, it's done. I've yet to see a business leader worth any amount of salt in his grit worry over the dammed chairs. As long as there are butt s in the seats and the projector works, they've got their own job to do and it usually isn't worrying about how straight the rows of chairs are. On the issue of humor I stand by the words my Dad always said, or would have if he'd thought of it which he didn't - you really do have to learn to laugh at yourself - you might as well because everyone else is.

The whole development of the weird fetish like fascination with properly aligned and regimented stuff, be it pins, chairs or hair lines, was well...really weird. There's a play on a quote that goes: Those who can, do: those who can't, teach; and those who can do neither, administer. James Baldwin the author said this which is kinda related: "Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it." Add in a little "lead, follow or get out of the way" and there's an idea there somewhere. Early on the activities at the Way were pretty much relaxed and enjoyable. Years pass and with increased "knowledge" and "maturity" you get a passle of poorly packed procedures and pain-in-the-tushes worrying about how straight the chairs are and if the mints are fresh and properly distributed in their little sissy bowls, ready for that unfortunate teacher at the podium whose breath is so atrociously rank that some form of masking is required less, I guess, the front row pass out from the sheer putridity of their breath. I guess - I never understood why anyone would actually need breath mints at that point. Before, I get it. After, I get it. Alone at the podium, speaking to a group....? That's some serious stank. Thus I've pondered - the need for Mints. Perhaps after running my mouth off for 1/2 hour or more some refreshment is needed, the better to remind those I see immediately after of how sweet every word that comes out of my mouth really is. I dunno. Our family has a little saying when we've been working or having serious fun and it's time for a shower, I confess to having introduced it and it seems to live on - average activity produces "1/4stank".....up from there you're at "1/2 stank" and a shower or bath is pending...."3/4 stank" - it's time. "Full Stank" - get the hose, you've reached Discovery Channel status, proceed to the Rhino's Pen. Mints at a podium to keep one's salivary glands at full function - kinda tweezey. Kinda tweezey. All of that stuff would give a stroke to anyone and I don't say that lightly. The worry, the fear that "something" wouldn't be exactly right and the full potential of the moment marred if not terminally damaged to the extent that the person holding forth so boldly in this day and time would what - be peppered so powerfully by packs of daimonion that they'd have to split their brain into two and devote half their believing to flooding their hedge of protection with plugs to fill the holes created by the utter chaos of someone sneezing at the wrong time? Is there ever a right time to sneeze? Or because a door slammed - possibly caused by some poor soul leaving, over come by the breath of the teacher who forgot to write in his notes "use the mints" because he'd had to park his own car and thus so horribly distracted by the walking then forgot to remember the mints? Or something? This kind of paranoid pea-pickin' hardly characterizes a corps like regiment of highly trained, able bodied and fully prepared leaders. If you can't handle the kind of stress produced by improperly placed water glasses, what are you going to do when faced with the big stuff, like the front row not laughing at the right time or worse, laughing at the wrong time? And especially when that should be a no brainer since they've heard it all before many times? In a way it's surprising their weren't more strokes.

"Pin Protocol". The HS dove pins were niceI and the blue "WOW" pins kinda snappy. But then you add a nametag pin to the assemblage and you're doing cross stitch to your coat. All those holes Now that's devilish. But I always liked wearing the dove pin as long as some horse's as s didn't come along and feel me up getting it to fly one direction or another.

Was anybody here at that 'businessmen's' class? How was he then? I was not. I was probably working. It was a clipped form of pfal for people who didn't have time to sit through 34 hours of class. It was 36 hours and no one with a family and a job has 36 hours of time to squeeze into 2 weeks, the get 'em in-get 'em out schedule that was recommended for a long time. That's half the time Jesus was dead, for God's sake. A lot of people did it but it wasn't the way to do it. IMO. but if one made a lot of money, exceptions were made for you. If you had some shine to bring to the party, some influence, some dough-ski bro-ski, you got some fudge room. For awhile. The best time for many people to be in the Way was when they were getting in - once you "knew better" all hel l could break loose if your Holy Spirit dove pin dove the wrong way because the weak willed idiots running the Way couldn't teach the bible with Satan getting that kind of access into the pen.