WordWolf

I have very little to say on the subject. So, this will be quick. I know there's a few Jews who make a point of being buried in a specific cemetery because they believe that The Resurrection will start there and this will save them some time. They also won't have themselves cremated because they need their bodies intact. My thinking is that my body won't be intact at the time unless it happens when I'm alive or immediately after I die. So, there's no qualitative difference I see between being reconstituted from ashes vs being reconstituted from decomposed matter all in one spot. So, I'm thinking cremation is far more sensible for me. From a scientific perspective, how I'm buried seems to make no difference, and financially, it makes sense to use the cheapest method-which, again, is cremation. That's all I've got.

rfr's had a few threads specifically about her. Here's a few more: "Rosalie Rivenbark the pimp" "Who is Rosalie Fox Rivenbark?" "Ten Years of Rivenbark."

Thiese are some thoughts I have at the moment. A few threads reminded me that it's good to point some things out from time to time. I think it's a good time to point these out. Naturally, any poster's free to ignore this post- it's my thoughts and not an official ANYTHING. Ok, so the posters have come to a consensus that we don't really have to be polite towards each other. (I asked.) However, even if they don't want to be, it helps to at least know when what they're saying is likely to hurt someone's feelings, so that it's entirely intentional if they do so. That means thinking about the actual words we use. Most posters here don't post here with words that are considered racial epithets. They're aware which words will carry those meanings, and choose not to use them, for whatever reason they choose to refrain. There's plenty of words that can hurt people. Some are LIKELY to hurt people, and some are a stretch-but someone can choose to take offense at it anyway. In the case of the latter, there's not terribly much we can do-since lists of THOSE words change a lot, so what's a normal, inoffensive word one day may suddenly be on someone's list 2 days later. There's actually some of those words GSC or twi-specific. People never-been-way would view these words in a different fashion than people who have survived twi or its offshoots (Momentus jargon counts also), as well as words that have become common in being used to hurt ex-twi'ers. One common technique here- especially common among those who wish to elevate vpw to divine status and cover up his felonies, sins and shortcomings- has been to come up with excuses to DISMISS posts they don't like. Inconvenient facts arrived? Let's find a pretext to ignore the post, then we don't have to deal with the content. I've attempted, as time has progressed, to be very calm when posting-returning later to reply to something to ensure I don't react instead of refuting. So, it was obvious when one vpw fan responded to calm, reasoned posts from me by calling them "angry." Calm post after calm post were called "angry" or synonyms. This allowed that person to even skip reading the post, and gave them an excuse to move along without addressing a single point. Other posters pointed out that this was just in their imagination- I prefer to look back and see what was in the previous post that was so good, they had to misdirect people from the content because they couldn't address it. (This became useful to me in the long run.) Another person (or the same person) used a different approach. I pointed out that vpw was either unaware of something when he made a certain decision, or he was aware of it- and outlined what was wrong in either case. They replied by calling me "the devil." If I'd known then what I learned later, I would have known the previous point was irrefutable, at least by them, and expanded upon it. In my case, many of the words won't hurt- whereas for many other people they would, and that's why some people claim they've lurked. Comments on posters exposing twi sometimes contain claims that they're "angry" or the equivalent. That carries a lot of baggage here- in the context of the GSC, responding to the exposure of vpw's criminal or immoral practices by saying the exposer is "angry" or emotional rather than address their points, that strongly suggests the replier is a big fan of vpw and looking to whitewash his past of his rapes, his molestations, and all his other evil deeds rather than discuss them when they come up. There's plenty of other words that can be used, each with twi baggage, ex-twi splinter baggage, or GSC-specific baggage. I saw another example where someone wanted to silence a similar comment by invoking Momentus jargon. It's certainly possible for someone to ACCIDENTALLY hit on these words and use them- in which case, they should be made aware they can set someone off-or several someones off- when they do. That way, if they offend someone, they can do it intentionally rather than by accident.

The best part of the magazine- and we knew it on the field- was the GMIR articles. Those stopped completely when lcm drew his "line in the sand" at HQ, and, apparently, nobody qualified to write the articles fell on their faces before him to worship his as-inine self-image. So, the section went permanently missing. It looked like the entire Research Dept walked off-or were kicked out. Magazines after that were HEAVY on FILLER- lots of HUGE images, LOTS of photos, nice, big print. You could squeeze the actual content of an entire magazine into a few pages in a small font- and even less if you skipped the articles that were stealth advertisements- with all the competent people walking off, twi kept trying to trick people into showing up and replacing them. A talk on "Word in Culture" was ENTIRELY about "how to write an article for the magazine", and articles on the programs were all oriented towards encouraging applications at the end of the article.

There WAS a WKRP sequel show. Jennifer ran the office, and people kept thinking she was a BRAINLESS blonde and talked over her head. Les Nessman had a band-aid in the first episode, and they decided to make a running gag of it for the series. Dr Johnny Fever was Johnny Caravello, but also Johnny Midnite, Rip Tide, Heavy Early..... Venus Flytrap was Gordon SIms, who fled Vietnam to preserve his sanity. Mr Carlson was a World War II combat veteran.

It WAS WKRP. The show used real music by real artists, and it was a pain to try to get the rights for all the real music for DVDs and so on.

This TV show seems to have done better in syndication than in its original run. It was popular enough to justify an attempt at a sequel TV show with the cast returning. The office, naturally, was run by the supposed eye-candy receptionist. One character always had a band-aid visible in each episode. One character almost never used his real name- but had lots of alternatives. One character saw combat in World War II- but you'd never imagine it looking at him on the show. One character never used his real name because he deserted the US Army during the Vietnam War- while in the field. Finally, there was a perfectly logical, real-world reason why the show had problems being rebroadcast years later.

I'll start them in a few days. Maybe after that, posters who did the more casual posts in the other threads can rephrase them or repost them for the appropriate years.

I know one movie that included "Spirit in the Sky", and a different one that included "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Ok, that was Nick Lowe's "Cruel to be Kind." FREE POST!

No third name? But how can I feel confident about whether or not it's Julia Roberts?

This was the last of the Eyewitnesses threads. So, similar threads for years 1993 and following would be appropriate- would they be appreciated?

The Fog Years didn't draw so many posts, either....

Not many posts about specific memories from this year-at least, not on this thread.

Some personal recollections are here, as well...

There were a few memories here, as well.

For a single year, quite a few details were filled in here...

This thread had a lot more responses-which was to be expected. It included the initial recruitment explosion of twi.

It's possible someone who was in before 1966 will check in, but by this point, it's highly doubtful.

I started some threads specifically to put timelines in and fill in the details on each era. I'm interested in reviving them and adding new threads for the details included in these new threads, if anyone is interested. We could try to match the events to the years they happened for easier review for those reading them over. What do the rest of you think?

It came up here that lcm's grandiose delusions included that his wap class was the greatest thing since sliced bread and that it should attract students like flies to dung. So he concluded that- if it wasn't drawing numbers (and it was drawing pitiful numbers)- then what was needed was more salesmanship and then there would be more students- and more students would mean more people tithing and abundantly sharing- at whichever levels the ABS was being defined at that year. So, lcm decided that the best FINANCIAL decision was to make all the Corps into an aggressive sales force for wap, and the tuition, tithes and ABS would begin rolling in and replace all of us who'd left by then (more than 80% at that point.) So, the Corps were turned from people paying money to twi- tithes, ABS- to a PAID sales force (twi paying them) in the expectation that the operating expense of their salary would result in a rain of money from new people. Not only did that fail to happen, but the additional whammy of having to pay all the Corps to travel to Corps Week and ROA multiplied the expenses. Eventually, lcm had to admit his decision was bleeding the coffers dry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Lake Well, the evidence is pretty conclusive that John G Lake was a liar on a grand scale who made grandiose claims about his education and his connections. "He later claimed that he maintained relationships with many of the leading figures of his day including railroad tycoon James Jerome Hill, Cecil Rhodes, Mahatma Gandhi, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others." "When he began his preaching career he claimed to have walked away from a $50,000 year salary (around $1.25 million in 2007 US dollars[15]), as well as his seat on the Chicago Board of Trade. Lake's biographer, Burpeau, reported no evidence outside of Lake's own assertions that Lake was connected to these wealthy financiers and industrialists.[6] According to Morton, contemporary records show Lake never left Zion City at the time Lake was said to be making his name in Chicago; he instead worked in nearby Waukegan as an "ordinary, small-town insurance salesman". So, any claims that he actually produced healings should be highly suspect- since he's a proven, chronic liar. I'll have to look into this Curry Blake guy separately. However, so far, I do indeed SEE parallels with twi- both groups were founded by chronic liars with grandiose egos.

I prefer we not get into names if possible, but yes, that poster was serious. He said that when Jesus returns, he will hold a copy of the Orange Book in his hand and teach us from it. I figured he was making a joke. Someone else asked him- he was serious, and said he'd "seen him" that way "many times". He referred to the vpw books as God-breathed and said the KJV wasn't. Of vpw himself, he said he had an "overabundance of brains and brawn" and was "overgifted." Frankly, that was the reason I started the athletics poll. With claims vpw was some sort of super-athlete on the table for his claims, we examined his claims. vpw was on the basketball team in high school. After high school, he was deliberately vague- he "played basketball all through college" (no evidence anywhere he was actually on the varsity team, just a claim he played- and he could do that with a handful of friends once a semester), and he "was involved with" some NBL team. People naturally thought he was saying he was both a player in his college team, and the Sheboygan Redskins. However, that's not what he said-that's what he wanted us to hear. After getting away with that one, he began making claims like he invented the hook shot ( officially recorded in use in 1937 by a Lithuanian, obviously invented before then.) Then again, with its origins unclear (Harlem Globetrotter Geese Tatum-1942 to 1954 player- is often credited with it as well- he probably felt he could get away with attaching his name to it. When put to the test, that poster had cast aside everything and everyone else in his life that couldn't 100% support his claims- so, no significant other, and so on.

There's not much I can add to this, but I can add a little. When vpw was going to visit an area for, say, a weekend, a local was tasked with finding, buying and bringing SEVERAL bottles of Drambuie to present to vpw for use during his stay there. Someone reported confusion on behalf of the person-who had never heard of the stuff before but now had to buy a stack of bottles so a minister had the stack for personal use while he visited them for the next 2 days, vpw also had this thing of breath mints to counteract the chronic smell of booze and smoking on his breath. He used to have a bowl of breath mints at the podium. He would put one or more in his mouth, break them to get to the inner, more effective part, and use them that way. When he was unclear, staff thought he wanted a bowl of 1/2 breath mints, all pre-broken into 2 parts.

A history of twi is a history of "what did vpw co-opt, and when did he do it?" From the time he claimed he heard from God about God Almighty teaching him if he'd teach others, for about a decade (1942 to early 1950s), vpw was this small-time country preacher. It was only after he plagiarized BG Leonard's class and JE Stiles' book that he had a product worth buying- and thus, any significant numbers of customers. From that point on, he had significant numbers of customers- but no windfall of customers. Then, at the end of the 1960s, vpw read about the Jesus People in San Francisco. He went over there, and convinced them that he was some great one who had a deep understanding of God that was quite rare. So, he ended up scooping up part of the Christian movement there, and turned it into a sales-force for twi. He brought some of them to the farm, then sent some back to California and sent some others to the NY State area. THAT was when numbers leapt up for twi. People saw the legitimate, genuine Christians who were in those areas (like D00p in CA and H33fn3r in NY), and began showing up. Membership numbers in both areas shot up. After that happened, vpw announced that both groups were no longer going to operate independently- he was going to run the whole show from the farm. So, that's when the local groups became introduced to twi legalism- the early 70s, after the numbers were already increased. The biography of vpw thread should have the years for these things.