WordWolf

Inconceivable! That's "the Princess Bride, by S. Morgenstern."

I'm chagrined I hadn't noticed the first 2 things you've mentioned, despite discussing that show aloud. (I had fun, for example, discussing the AD&D Character Alignments that should be assigned to each regular character.)

That's a good point. It is difficult, at times, when trying to separate exactly what vpw really believed and what he merely professed. He explained the concept of "mental assent", where one holds an idea but never acts on it- and he was well-versed in the concept. We know that vpw chose ministry as a career path, and one no different from show business or business administration. He LATER built up that he was impressed with holy vocations, but we know he didn't have those convictions through his entire schooling. By his own admission, he was working as a pastor for a year and doing weekly sermons for a year BEFORE BELIEVING THE BIBLE WAS THE WORD OF GOD. So, he had no trouble preaching what he didn't believe. He did it lots of other times as well- like when telling people not to fool around outside of marriage WHEN IN PUBLIC but RECOMMENDING to others that they should fool around outside of marriage WHEN IN PRIVATE. We know his approach to "discerning of spirits" was partly rote repetition and spitting back the contents of books like "Angels of Light" and others, and partly designating targets from afar and announcing they were under demonic influence (a practice not that different from "Angels of Light".) When approaching the work of CHARLATANS exercising sleight-of-hand to perform "supernatural" feats, he pronounced them as genuine spiritual phenomenon, albeit evil ones. He even claimed to have attended at least 1 seance and having "shaking hands" with a materialized spirit, describing the sensation later. "Ever shake hands with someone who doesn't shake hands?" Either all of that was ripped off of someone else's account (common practice for vpw), or he was able to attend a seance, and have someone do all sorts of demonic supernatural phenomena in front of him, all with him either UNABLE to do anything to disrupt it from his chair (a spiritual weakling of the first order), or UNWILLING to do anything to disrupt it from his chair (demonstrating spiritual sloth and apathy and a weakness for sin of that type.) So, in this, was he a major liar and deceiver, a spiritual FRAUD? Or was he a spiritual WEAKLING? Or was he spiritually bankrupt of caring about the things of God even when an injustice was literally in his face? That's all the possibilities, and all of them are bad. (Those who object to those possibilities, I point out that you have to find another possibility that actually can explain what did and did not happen as opposed to just disliking the options. We had that once where there were 2 options, both bad, and a poster responded by calling me the devil and refusing to refute the facts AND the conclusions.)

"I'll have what she's having!"

If anyone wants to get into whether or not the 9 are available now, please take it to Doctrinal. There's been at least 1 thread about it, and you can start a new thread or revive an old thread on it. Either way, it's irrelevant to the thread I want, because it's a non-issue RELATIVE TO THE THREAD. (I add that last part in deference to those who then turn around and say "You said the 9 are a non-issue" and so I will help shore up their deficient reading comprehension skills.) ================================= Whether or not the 9 are available now or common now as real things, it should be obvious that it is possible to at least TRY to fake them. Did vpw fake his way through all 9? I believe the evidence is that he did. What he did certainly could have been fakes of them. Let's go through them and see what he did. Speaking in tongues- despite his claims that it was impossible to fake, it is very possible to fake. Small children play games with non-word syllables that resemble words. Actors train with them in learning the basics of performing. And charlatans can do it, too. So, vpw certainly could have done the sounds. Could he have sounded convincing when he did? He sounded sincere when he told the CFS class that men shouldn't "help themselves" to a woman, but he was doing exactly that while saying it was wrong. So, he could sound sincere regardless of the truth of what he was saying. WOULD he have faked SIT? ACCORDING TO HIM, HE FAKED IT. His account of the 1953 conference where he met Stiles included some Christians trying to lead him into SIT, and him deliberately faking it. Did he fake it to them? Either he did and admitted it, or he claimed he did and was fine with the idea that he'd faked it. Furthermore, his actual incidences of SIT always seemed rather limited. All the recorded incidents I've heard of him always had the same exact syllables, regardless of decade, audience, and situation. "Lo SHANta mala ka SIto la SHONta." The man who supposdely led us into it seemed to be stuck on producing exactly one sentence. And he was the instructor! Interpretation of tongues and prophecy. To fake those would require: -a willingness to fake it and sound like he wasn't -an ability to speak with conviction -an ability to extemporize messages supposedly from God A number of people have admitted being aware they'd faked it during their twi time. It's actually easy with the right environment, the right instruction, and samples of what it's supposed to sound like. Some said they weren't aware-some of the time-they were faking it, but other times they were very aware they composed the message. vpw certainly could have spoken convincingly, and claimed it was from God. Word of Knowledge, Word of Wisdom, Discerning of Spirits. vpw definitely faked Word of Knowledge. First of all, his definition was rote and didn't match reality- he required it be information that it was PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to know by the 5 senses. Rather, it would be information you didn't know by the 5 senses, whether you could have known it that way or not. So, he seemed to lack a practical understanding of how it worked, and relied on Leonard's definition and anecdotes. vpw made a point of making vague statements without any backing, and led people to think it was Word of Knowledge or Word of Wisdom when it was actually ignorant and unwise. He had a hotline to some tinfoil hat conspiracy nuts, and used their "inside" information to claim he had an inside track to God Almighty. But he was often wrong with them. His vague, context-less statements left people thinking he perceived things they didn't, but he really didn't. He even lacked the conventional wisdom to lay off the tobacco and alcohol that degraded his body and eventually killed him. As for discerning of spirits, his vague pronouncements were meant for that as well, but they were often wrong. Worse, when teaching on the subject, he used examples that CHARLATANS did using SLEIGHT OF HAND and claimed they were legitimate supernatural occurrences. So, it's plain that vpw couldn't discern spirits, either. Faith, working of miracles, gifts of healings. In twi, vpw gave many anecdotes about these, but actual eyewitnesses seemed to be absent. In far-off India, when and where it was impossible to interview neutral witnesses, vpw was an INCREDIBLE healer who had crowds FLOCK to him for healing. However, he couldn't even heal crippled people attending ROA specifically FOR healing, who were convinced he could heal them. It's also worth noting that he wore glasses as the years passed, and that he died of a lingering illness. If the man lived up to his own hype on healing, either was a correctible problem. As for miracles, he was, again, big on talking about them, but the rank-and-file never actually SAW him perform any. So, in conclusion, vpw could have faked it all, and I think the evidence supports the idea that he DID fake it all.

American Beauty Alicia Silverstone Batman & Robin

Was "the Shawshank Redemption" really that good? Seems like a lot to live up to.

You had me on 1/2 of it. On later reflection, I have an idea. "Fast Times at Ridgemont High Noon." (I was trying to remember a movie ending in "fast.")

I've got that it's not in the US, because the US is 120 V and a lot of other places use 220 V. "The Great Hotel Budapest"? (Or however it's titled.)

I don't think they "MUST", but it's not a bad idea if they have the time. The "Eyewitness" threads were meant to help us fill in the blanks for each other and help form a more complete picture of what happened, and when. The 1966-1975 thread: The 1976 thread: The 1977-1980 thread: The 1981-1984 thread: The 1985 thread: The 1986-1988 thread: The 1989-1992 thread: There were other threads with twi history, but that was it for this set. (The thread for before 1966 never got an informative reply.)

I'm not sure if it will help jog a memory or 2. However, we have a few threads that might help with that. Here's 2 of them, 2 "Eyewitness" threads.

Confused Myra Breckinridge with Erin Brokovich. Any chance this is Irene Bedard?

I thought of it as "The Incredibles Mr Lim-Pet Sematary", but that's it, all right. I'm shocked at how it sounds like one long movie, or maybe a trilogy.

That's it.

"Woke up, got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head."

Trancers Tim Thomerson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I think it's part of the messageboard software- that the Admin can set what level to stop. So, it can allow everything, or stop only a few words, or a LOT of words. I was on a board once where I was referring to imaginary clothing stores like "Retail Slut" and it saved as "Retail *very friendly person*". A different post showed up as "Meanwhile, at stately Wayne Manor, Bruce Wayne, and his faithful young ward, thingy Grayson..." On this one, I know one body part gets translated to "foot", one curse just becomes an ellipse, excrement becomes "dang", and so on. That's even true in a URL, and was a problem once when I wanted to leave a link for something about the Peshi++a Text and it broke the link by changing the text to the "Pedangta Text." Most of the time, we just don't notice. Although someone did once post something funny by making a comment and using the word that results rather than the original word. (It's not worth the entire explanation now.) I know we've had horror stories from the ROA's before. Somewhere, I think there is such a single thread, too. And if you reply in succession, quickly, with nobody posting between them, the software will merge the replies.

Ok, we have a new movie triple coming up. It's a stealth triple and is a little sneaky even so. Don Knotts plays a man who wishes to become a fish- and does so! He becomes a superhero and founds a superhero family, eventually retiring and having to come out of retirement later for one last case. Much later, his fish-corpse is buried, but in a graveyard where the animals sometimes come back as zombies! Stephen King shares writing credit on this one, but not on the animated portions, which are 1/2 of this movie. [Yes, 1/2 of the 3 parts.]

Julia Roberts is my guess, yes.

Whistling while you work sounds like one of those spirituals used by slaves toiling in the cotton fields. Or those dwarves mining in the caves. So, I'll go with "Snow White and the 7 Dwarves." Arsenio Hall once said he thought it was a bad idea that now Disney was allowing weddings at Disneyland. Just the idea of 7 short guys walking up to your woman saying "Hi ho, hi ho" sounded like the beginning of a fight.

It was the big single off of "Stunt", and was probably that band's biggest song. (Unless that was "It's All Been Done Before.") It was even used in some car commercial.

"One Week," the Bare-Naked Ladies.

GENTLEMEN.... Do either of you really think this is productive? Do you guys really want to fight it out in an alley or something?

I'm not sure if "Hannie Caulder" was a character in "Mystic Pizza", but the eponymous character in "Myra Breckenridge" should be the woman played by Julia Roberts.

If that's from an article online, please provide the URL as a link. If it's from a print article, please cite your source. We're curious people. And it's polite....