CoolWaters

Here are some interesting threads: http://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/index.ph...c=10997&hl= http://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/index.ph...ic=8946&hl= http://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/index.ph...ic=8945&hl= http://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/index.ph...ic=4636&hl=

It is still very difficult for me to read all of the information here, pinklady. Know that no matter what happens, you, your children and your grandchildren are in my heart's prayers. Again, anything I can do to help...even if it means just listening...I'm here. It's hard to explain how things become overwhelming so rapidly inside a cult. Most people cannot even comprehend what happens when a 'man of god' decides to destroy a family. It's all over the news all the time, but people seem to think that those whose lives were destroyed must have done something to the 'man of god' or to 'the one body' to have brought such crap upon themselves. Others think that somebody's hiding something and that's why they didn't come forward sooner. Still others think that those of us who have been caught up in such tragedies are just plain stupid for not getting out and doing something about it all. The sad truth is that when it comes to a religious organization, most of those who can help won't. These threads here at GSC are full of the stories of those of us who ended up having to fight the system itself to protect our families. Some of us lost that battle, too. Those of us who have been down this path or a similar path include Robes, templelady, myself, and a few others I can't think of their handles right now. Read the threads and contact these women....they're great resources!!!!!! They're also great support. Have you heard of Steve Hassan? Google his name and maybe contact him/his organization. I hear he's helped many, many extwi folks. Even Dr. Phil turns to him when dealing with cults. Help is out here, pinklady. Maybe you haven't found it yet, but it's there. Seek and ye shall find. That's a promise ya know. :) Again, I'm here whenever you need it if you ever need it. {{{{pinklady}}}}

Sleet, freezing drizzle, snow, rain on top of it all...glazed streets! But we live on a street that the maintenance crews use for a turnaround and a resting spot...so our street is often the first side street to get salted and sanded. :) It's COLD, though. Not so bad today...up in the low 20s. According to Weather Bug, KC's highs and lows will both be lower than Anchorage's highs and lows all week. Sigh. Last week was early May type of weather.

{{{{pinklady}}}} I can't get past that 3rd paragraph...there were videos made....OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am crying and shaking and raging and screaming and I just want to rip twi a new a$$hole!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Feel free to PM me...email me at billandvickynicholson@yahoo.com...you can call me...anything I can say or do to help you, I will! So far, it's the same SH*+ as what happened in Alaska!!!!!!!!!! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow! This thread has really turned out pretty much way more fantastic than what I thought! LOL TYVM {{{{everybody}}}}!!!! Just for clarification... TWI did not teach that etiquette was for the mogs or anything...and I didn't say they did. What I said was that the people I knew were learning etiquette to please the mogs etc.. They weren't doing it for the social graces, but to keep themselves from getting reamed when they were eating with/serving leadersh*+. My point was that leadersh*+ was so demanding and 'reproving' that it clouded anything graceful and colored it all bondage. There's a bible verse about those who do turn the grace of our Lord into bondage...isn't there? Krys...wow! I'm glad something clicked for you like that! I had no idea or intention...was just rambling mostly... :) That's the beauty of GSC, imo. :)

I remember when I first got out of twi. I was a b|tch! (And I don't mean the good type, either. You know...Beautiful, Intelligent, Talented, Classy and Honorable...like I am now. ) Sick people, especially family members, lacked in their believing...so they deserved to be sick. Gawd forbid I came across anybody disabled! They had 'devil spirits' doncha know. People suffering through cancer...well! They were anathema to the nth degree. If someone died, they did something to 'get out of fellowship'...so they deserved it. Any accident was deserved. I could go on and on and on, but we all know what twi poison does to a person's thinking. What I want to talk about is how twit brain poisoned me socially. The reason I want to talk about this is because I think that as the poison leaches out, I tend to forget what it did to me...and so I also tend to forget what the antidote has been...which tends to make me forget how to treat those just getting out. To show how sick twit brain made me, I'll first share how I was raised and how I thought before twi. Then I'll share how I became in twi. My sister and I were raised to be senator's wives. My brother was raised to be a senator or better. This was our mother's dream for us. So she began grooming us early, groomed us intensely, and continued to groom us as long as we were within her sphere of influence. When each of us reached the age of 4 our mother taught us about formal dining. My sister and I were taught how to set a formal table, how to make a proper seating chart (lefties and righties cannot be next to each other, always boy-girl-boy-girl except when it would appear improper...this kind of stuff), choosing china and silver patterns, etc. My brother was taught how to seat women, how to use the utensils, how to pass plates, how to chew his food and sip his drinks, etc. Our whole 4th year of life was spent on intense learning about formal dining. She chose our 4th year of life because she wanted us to learn this stuff before we got to school and learned bad dining habits from other kids. Anyway, once we got the dining part down pat, we were taught the behavior part. My mother always said to me, "You want to be able to be comfortable sitting and conversing with princes, paupers, presidents and working men. You're going to be among the people as well as the governing bodies. You never want to appear to shun the people, but you also never want to appear to be one of the people.". We were taught how to mirror, how to bow or curtsy, how to shake hands (my brother) or offer our hand lightly (me and my sister), how to sit, stand for long periods, smile, walk, use body language, speak up or speak down without seeming to do either, and all that other stuff of etiquette and gentility. At the age of 12, she began teaching us about our physical appearance...how to do it right and use it right. Charm school and finishing school for me and my sister (something we did with private tutors WHILE we were in public high school...I think my mother made deals with our tutors because I now know we couldn't afford all this stuff). I even did a stint as a teen model with Patricia Stevens the first as my mentor and sponsor. I don't know what she did with my brother because by time he was 12, I was out of the home. When my sister and I each entered Junior High, we were social butterflies and the hostesses with the mostest. By time we entered High School, we were dreaming dreams of being Miss America, winning scholarships, going on to college to find our future senators, and then settling down for the Fairy Princess life. (What really happened is a whole 'nother story...that isn't important to this topic except that it led me to seek out cults and finally settling into twi.) We had our 'public face' and our 'private face'. Never in a million years would we ever be caught being rude, insulting or nasty in any way in public! For shame! The thought of doing such things even now brings back all my training and makes me feel small. Although I fully believed I was part of the elite, I was to NEVER make others feel that about me. Then along came twi... One of my earliest memories of the underbelly of twi was all the excitement over learning etiquette so to avoid being reproved by the MOG. At first I couldn't believe adults hadn't learned etiquette yet. I was shocked, actually. Then I was deeply disturbed that they were learning etiquette not to be able to be comfortable with people, but to avoid being reamed in public. It really bothered me that the upper echelon of twi had no manners themselves. But I learned to place people above me and be ashamed of myself just because I wasn't them. That's the poison of twit brain, imo. That turns a person into an angry, scared, judgmental, demanding, exacting, vicious and vile bag of reactionary self-loathing. This is how the poison works on one's inner image of one's self. Setting a formal table correctly in twi became not a skill, but a standard by which one's 'walk' was measured. Mistakes showed a person's 'devilish lack of attention to detail'. Perfection showed a person's 'devilish false pride'. For everything I learned about the social graces when growing up, twi took that and turned it all into a no-win situation in which losing pointed to a 'devil spirit' or, gawd forbid, being 'seed'. Eventually I became accustomed to doing a 'checkup from the neck up' and finding myself woefully lacking in everything. Finally I was fully twit brained. Then the self-loathing set in. It doesn't take long after this mentality sets in for a person to be completely unable to function without fear...putting one always on the defensive, always on the lookout, always seeing things as a scheme of some sort to find more fault with one's existence. Then all that gets turned outward. Of course it would! That's just too too much for a person to keep turning inward. By my last interactions with twi, I was a pro at making everybody else feel my pain. I just could not bear to feel it myself. Nearly everybody I knew in twi was doing the same thing, too. So I fit in in twi. But then I left twi. I didn't fit in anywhere! I could not understand the total lack of striving for perfection in the world. Didn't people know they were insane and that without the perfection of 'the Word' they couldn't even think straight? Why did they settle for insanity???? What was wrong with people????? And so I lived my life in this bubble of twit brain for many years. Then I found trancenet. Oh boy! Likeminded people! What I didn't know was that the likemindedness I felt was in the inner pain turned outward. Yikes what a trip that was! But it was a necessary trip, imo. Because the poison of twit brain that made this pain was still festering inside...still oozing into my every thought pattern...still working its death to any spark of hope and kindness and, well, any fruit of the spirit trying to fire up in me. The poison had to get out of me and be exposed. That wasn't enough, though. I needed the antidote. I finally found that antidote here at GSC. Kind, patient, understanding, forgiving people who have been down this path and are lighting my feet as I try to find myself again. God knows it took me what seems like too long to finally relax a little bit (I still don't do that very well) and realize that it's a process, not an instant cure. The more successfully I interact here at GSC, the more successfully I interact in 3D. I'm learning again to be gracious. I'm learning again to be kind. I'm learning again to be accepting. I'm unlearning the elitism. I'm unlearning the knee-jerk judgmental reactions. I'm unlearning the paranoia of assuming 'devilish' ulterior motives. Because here at GSC, twit brain is immediately recognized...and pointed out. It is discussed at length from many perspectives and many experiences. The options of how to get over it are as varied and personal as need be. No, GSC is not the totality of the antidote for twit brain. But it is often the beginning place. So when someone first comes to GSC, I hope that I remember that the poison is stronger than the antidote at first...and I'll be kind, patient, understanding and forgiving so that I will be part of lighting the feet for someone just beginning down this path.

When I was a teenager I made resolutions...until I got into twi and somebody told me that making resolutions was like reading fortunes. Now I have just two resolutions every year: 1)stay alive, and, 2)make personal improvements, no matter how small, in all aspects of my life.

These are good! :) I particularly like a-volleyball. LMAO! Bill has called the manifestations 'many infestations' for a long, long time. Hehehe. Belle, I am pretty sure that you originated TWIt and Moneyhands. And you are famous (or would that infamous...hmmm...? LOL) for your twists and turns with our language. LOL I've called butterflies 'flutter bys' for decades now. Butter does not fly, but those bugs do flutter by. Makes sense to me. :) Does anybody remember the Martin Lawrence character "SheNayNay"? She was the hood chick (played by Martin, of course) with HUGE 'tude. My granddaughter's name is Renee. I was the first one to hold her when she was born and noticed that she had HUGE 'tude...so I immediately began calling her ReNayNay. :) Now it's just NayNay. More, please! I love this kind of stuff. :)

Abi, are you getting web mail (checking your email online) or are you using a separate email program (like Outlook Express)? If you're getting your email online, do you run the 'check for viruses' before you open the mail? If so, you ought to be fine. I have ATT/Yahoo for my ISP and I'm pretty satisfied with their security for email. The rest of their stuff...well...it's all we've got for DSL in our area...so I won't complain...yet. :)

Yeah...I can get a 260 gig for 99 bucks...but I don't have that much to spend. Sigh. I've used a 40 gig and 2 10 gigs for years and never needed anything else...so an 80 gig will be like a palace to me. :) Also, my son says that my old drives aren't going to run as quickly and as seamlessly as a new one will because of something I don't understand but is like the difference between the old RAM and the new RAM stuff. Make sense? LOL I'm running 2000 Professional with sp4 and all the updates. I've tried and tried and tried to load from CD but am being demanded to load from A drive. I don't have any floppies right now to make a boot disk, so I can't load from A. You think that might work...loading from A? If so, I'll have my son run out and get some floppies. About a year ago I got a new box, new power pack, new processor and new motherboard. Put all my old drives, vid cards and sound cards into the new box (with the new power pack, new processor and new motherboard). We just replaced the vid card. The sound card is still doing fine. As I said earlier, we're on the 4th of the 4 hard drives we have. Just put in a new CDRW drive. I don't know exactly how much RAM I have, but I've got 3 new (over the last year) sticks in there. My A drive is starting to act up, so I'm gonna have to throw a new one in there pretty soon. I also want to add another fan (for a total of 4) and upgrade my DVD stuff (I want TV in/out!). God bless Micro Center! :) Yes...my computer is a Frankenstein...but it works for my graphics exactly the way I want it to work, so I'm happy. Our (me and my son) next project is building a server. I just LOVE playing with my son!!!!! :D :D OK...probably tmi for ya...tyvm for your help!

It doesn't really matter who it says it's from in the 'From' area. Do you know how to check the headers? Check there...that may tell you where they're coming from...at least give you an IP address...maybe...if it's not too well masked. OK, let's say your boss has this worm that is designed to send out masses of spam. Typically those kinds of worms will use all of the addresses and/or domains listed in her address book to send this spam to wherever. Just depends on how the worm is written. So if you are in her address book, spam will be sent from her computer BUT with your 'information'. Anybody else she has in her address book may experience what you are experiencing, too...since the spam is using the information in her address book. I dunno about domain locking.

Ewwwwww Abi! That's an email virus or something. Do you have a virus scanner on the 'puter? If not, somewhere in these threads are links to free online scans. It may not even be on your computer, either. Anyone you email with may have the virus and if they have your addy in their address book, then the emails are going to go out as if from you. Notify all the people you email with and have them check their 'puters. One way I've been able to tell if it's me or somebody I email with is to put the address of *!* or some other such nonsensical and symbol 'address' in my address book. It will be the first addy listed, so if it's going out from address book, the 'response' will come from that address. See? (I may not being saying this right or sensibly.)

Mfr Samsung Product Specifications Capacity 80GB Interface Type IDE UltraDMA ATA/133 Buffer Size (Cache) 2MB Spindle Speed (RPM) 7,200 RPM Seek Time Average 8.9 ms Maximum Burst Interface Transfer Rate Up to 133MBps Internal Data Transfer Rate Up to 741Mbps Ports and Connectors IDE 40-pin Connector; 4-pin Power Connector Manufacturer Warranty 3 Year Limited Warranty *************************************** I have somehow burnt out 3 hard drives in the last 90 days. They all say "No NTLDR". I've been advised that means they're bad. Why is this happening? Is it because they are all at least 4 years old?

The other day my husband referred to his car as 'the Coldsmobile'. It made me LMAO because his driver's side window doesn't roll up. I told him how witty he is (and he is...when he wants to be) to have thought up something like that. Then he informed me that he stole the word from the Li'l Abner comic strip. Well, he's still witty...when he wants to be. Anyway, I've been thinking about the quirky way people say and/or write things. For example, calling people in twi 'twits'. Something my daughter came up with when she was a little girl was saying, "Gringo" when the traffic signal turned green. (My hubs can sit through green lights if not told the light had changed.) Things like this. I try to come up with a quirky thing or two (or more :) ) to add to my speaking and/or writing every month or so. My most recent (as I've shared somewhere else here) is to say "tiffany" instead of "epiphany". I got bored with saying epiphany all the time, thought of what rhymed with the word, then had a light bulb go off and realized I had just had a tiffany. So do you all have anything quirky you say/write?

Here is a discussion on a gay message board about this article.

I think, from my experience of long-time (10 or more years) close friendships with people who are gay, that saying, "If I could choose, I'd choose otherwise" is a point of argument, not an actual statement of not wanting to be gay. As you probably know, anti-gay rhetoric against gay rights is typically, "Being gay is a choice like ____________. There are no rights for such choices." Fill in the blank with any addiction, criminal activity or whatever. To which the gay community has responded with, "If I had a choice about it, I wouldn't have chosen this." However, that's not usually where the statement stops. Usually the statement goes on to say, "I wouldn't have chosen this life of being spit on, beaten up, discriminated against, hated, etc." The statement typically isn't about being gay, but about the repercussions of being gay. As I said, though, this is from experiences in life. I certainly do not speak for all of gaydom. :)

Pawtucket, it's good to read you saying, "This was an extraordinary circumstance in my experience on forums." Kind of a "Whew!" moment. TYVM. Abi, yes, I agree...shame is a big point with this...it is being attempted to shame me into submission. If it were just me and my life involved, I'd flip them the bird and beat them to the punch about posting the information. It would be quite nice, actually, to be able to discuss some things here on GS. However, there were other people and their lives involved...inadvertently...without their realization...without their understanding...without them having a clue. It would be just downright mean to somehow implicate them in any way and/or to bring parts of their personal lives out into the open. There would be no way to 'expose' me without hurting others in the process. Which is what is getting under my skin. It is nice to read you saying, "First and foremost, the moderators here do a great job of dealing with attacks that are prersonal in nature or that reveal personal information. This I know first hand. If one slips through (and that can happen through no fault of the moderators) and you let them know about it, they will handle it quickly and fairly." I think my shoulders finally unknotted. :) Hambone my man! You wrote, "The waiter here seems quite capable to mop up some messy threads.." Yeah...I have to agree wholeheartedly.

I'm not Trefor (where IS he, anyway...I miss him!) and I'm not gay (well, some would argue...thanks :) )...hope I will do... Right off the top of my head and with my initial reaction I'd say that if you substituted 'colored skin' for gay or homosexual, then you'd have an idea of what may be the problem here. Can't you just see what somebody like lcm would do with such a 'breakthrough'? And there are far too many lcm types in this world.

Ah. Belle. :) I'm always ....ing people off, Belle. You know that. Doesn't mean I've done anything to be 'ratted out' about. Why do you ask? As I said in an earlier post on this thread, whatever I have said to another GSer in private I usually bring out to the open threads sooner or later. As for dirt on somebody? Get real. I've had 'dirt' on people for years...never posted it, either. Why do you ask? I may seem to be the only one questioning this, but 2 pages of comments and over 400 views says otherwise. I seem, actually, to be the only one with the guts/stupidity/whatever to make a topic of it out in the open...as opposed to 'private' messages that I later post in the open. My agenda? I said it in an earlier post: I've of late been threatened with someone bringing my personal information out on the open threads. Why do you ask? The information that was threatened to be brought out on the open threads had to do with the nervous breakdown I recently had...and that I talked about here on GS. The only thing that was personal about that time in my life were the incidents that led up to the breakdown. Why would somebody threaten to bring that information out into the open forums? To expose the insanity in my life? Well...I've done that for myself quite well, thank you. BUT... It was just a back-of-my-mind issue until the PM postings in the CES forum. I really didn't think that long-time GSers would post PMs out in the open...until it happened. So I wondered what was the agenda with that. I mean, seriously, long-time GSers know how to block someone from PMing them, know how to alert the moderators, know how to protect themselves, and most usually, in the first few PM interactions with someone new, don't give out enough information that if the new person is a whack job, then the 'threats', 'harassment' and 'abuse' are virtual and impotent. The only agenda I could figure is it's a control game. So I asked... Isn't it? ::shrug:: Maybe I'm seeing things 'wrong'.

Well, folks, tyvm for all your information and offers of assistance! I greatly appreciate it all! But with more research on my idea...I found out that the best I could hope for would be to participate in an already existing committee. Sigh. Nothing new under the sun... Unless you were the paper clip inventor. LMAO

I guess I should have expected that asking, "Is there a rule?" would lead to someone contacting an attorney. Sigh. In the rules of the forum it is stated: " All are welcome here. However, harassing behavior will result in being banned from the forums. There is no need for personal attacks. If you have a specific problem with a poster, settle it outside of the forum. Threads of that nature will be deleted or sent to the Soap Opera Forum." IMO, that covers PMs, too. ::shrug:: Perhaps I'm wrong. And what about this trust thing...? If it's posted somewhere, then beware that it will probably come out in the open sooner or later. Hm. I suppose that's a good rule of thumb...for people who never interact in 3D with one another. But what happens when people interact in 3D, get along just fine for quite a while...say a year or more...then somebody gets PO'd at somebody in 3D and someone decides that it's time to reveal...or threaten to reveal...conversations had in PMs? Technically, that's fair game...right? I mean, it was posted and all... But those posts were part and parcel of telephone conversations or discussions over coffee or even shared somewhere off this board like in a MySpace blog that is private (which means not open to the public but open only to those invited in). What then? I mean, once somebody gets PO'd at somebody else, innocent quips can easily be turned and twisted into 'threatening language'...or some other such excuse to get even. The underlying promise that because information was in an email or an internet post somewhere, then it's fair public game is more or less a control game. Isn't it?

Thanks Paw and GT and all the rest. Yesterday's stuff just tipped the iceberg for me...so to speak. There's always been a low-level jumpiness about the PM's...and there's always been an instance or two to keep the jumpiness jumpy... Of late I've been threatened a few times with bringing personal stuff out to the open forums. As I have perpetrated that in the (distant) past, I know I've got it coming. Quite frankly, though, anything personal I've shared with any GSer, I've ended up sharing out in the open forums in the end, anyway. But back to the topic at hand... It is admirable how GSers circle the wagons when one is threatened. But circling the wagons is not the same as cliquish sniping and biting. Ya know? And circling the wagons is not the same as revealing personal information. Ya know? Isn't there a type of wasp that, when threatened, puts out some sort of SOS and calls other wasps to its defense? That's kinda what happens around here sometimes. And sometimes, around here, that defense is reserved for a favored crowd... It's an 'Us v Them' kinda thing. And that's all well and good and all... But what happens when 'Them' is 'Us' being bored or cat-fighting or mis-reading or something else? Where is the line drawn? Should a line be drawn? I dunno. I've pretty much quit doing the whole PM thing. Oh, I'll have a conversation throughout a day or something, but as for anything like what I used to have going with the PMs...well, never again. It's just not worth the wondering when I'll fall out of grace with somebody...and that wasp's nest will get stirred up. Ya know? It's just sad that this lingering mentality shows up as often as it does. IMO.

CESintelpro? :D And their spies come from the CESpool... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I crack me up sometimes.

When do PMs become public property? Are there any actual rules here about this?

Where does it say God is Truth? If it says that, then, given the exactness of language in the bible (which I don't agree is there, but for the sake of argument am using it), then Jesus MUST be God. Of course, that goes for wherever it might say God is life or God is the way...