Mister P-Mosh

That gave me an idea. We should rewrite "A Christmas Carol" to be "A TWI Carol" wherea devout TWI follower is met by three devil spirits who try to make him stand in the household in the promised land of the prevailing word operating all nine all the time. VPW is the devil spirit of TWI past, LCM is the devil spirit of TWI present, and Rivenbark is the devil spirit of TWI future. Instead of helping Tiny Tim, he will help his own, emaciated brain.

They are devil spirits. This site has DiscerningOfSpirits 3.0 installed on the server, so you can see them in the list.

My daughter is too young to go out much, but we may take her out for her first time this year (then give away all the candy.) For me, I really enjoy Halloween now. It was the holiday most hated by TWI, where we were supposed to hide in our house with the lights out so our friends and neighbors wouldn't come knock on our doors to get candy. So now that I'm out, I don't mind all the ghosts, monsters, witches, vampires, etc. I see it as a day for fun, not as a day of promoting "the adversary."

I've not used it, but a friend of mine told me that a creme with Retin-A works wonders. However, you may need a prescription to get it, and even if not, your son should see a dermatologist first to see what would be the best treatment. Oh, and I know a woman who used Acutane, and it was terrible. It caused her to get scars by dramatically drying up the pimples, and she had problems with her joints, which is apparently common with that. My wife tried it a little while too and it caused a lot of problems, so she stopped it within a week.

Thank you for saying this. As an atheist, I care more about people now than I did as a member of TWI or Christian. The reason is because if this life is all we have, there's no "reward in heaven" so there will be no "justice" for people suffering now if we don't stop it now. Sometimes it seems like religious leaders have people focus on heaven so they accept the problems in their lives now instead of fixing things.

If you would have left the end off, it would have sounded like most of the "words of prophecy" that were said during fellowship. I'd offer up mine, but it would have the same stuff most likely but in a different order.

Those guys were just in charge of the continental congress, not real presidents. George Washington was the first president, because the role of president was defined by the U.S. Constitution, which comes long after the Articles of Confederation. As to SIT, I do remember reading articles where it was researched. You could say that it was somewhat inconclusive and could be interpreted any number of ways. Basically, for someone that believes in SIT as a supernatural thing, the data showing that some brain function stops that are normally present is a sign that it is the "spirit" causing it rather than the human brain. For those that believe SIT to be pure nonsense, it's a sign that people simply aren't thinking when they do it, and gibberish comes out as a result. So at this point, there's nothing to conclusively define it. However, I tend to lean towards the gibberish side. I don't doubt that people really aren't faking it, but rather that it's something not fully understood, sort of like daydreaming.

That's a good idea. I got rid of everything except for the photos I am in, but I've been thinking of getting rid of those too. While I like to have my AC photo because that's part of my history, I also feel like I should destroy it or just throw it away to remove all TWI crap from my house. I probably even have my nametags in a box somewhere too, but I'm not sure. Maybe if the weather is cool enough this weekend I can go into the attic and get rid of this crap.

Down's back down below 10,000 again. I plan to just file my 401k and IRA statements without opening them for a while. It sounds like the bailout isn't helping, and that more banks are expected to fail all over the nation and world over the next year or so. I'm thinking that doom and gloom will rule the day for a while.

I agree with what Seth said above this post, but also that these are the very players involved with Enron. I suggest you either read the book or watch the documentary, "The Smartest Guys In The Room" to get the full picture of what happened with Enron. These same big banks, run by the same people, gambled with Enron and helped commit the crimes Andy Fastow dreamed up. If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, you really should because it's a very interesting part of recent history. The bailout was rejected! WOOHOO! It seems that politicians with some amount of integrity from both parties in the House came together in the spirit of bipartisanship and dropped the bailout like it deserved. Hopefully now they can focus on helping normal Americans instead of ripping us off to pay a ransom to the wealthy.

I can say that as a kid, I had plenty of friends growing up. I didn't get along well with a lot of other TWI kids, but mostly because we were well behaved, while others in TWI seemed content to raise spoiled, insolent brats. As a teen, I made a few friends, although they were only in TWI because of their parents. When I went to the Advanced Class, I made some great friends there, but in the 90's and 2000's prior to TWI's recent image softening campaign, I didn't want to get too close to someone in TWI. It was pretty easy to do. I can say that yes, there was some genuine care for me in TWI and vice versa. However, I would say that after LCM took over, the attitude changed, and close connections were rare. I remember as a little kid how close people were in TWI. I would say the defining moment for when that all fell apart is when we were lectured by some hotshot local MOG that we (well, the adults mainly but I was a kid hearing all of this) were not to tell people, "You're the best!" or anything like that if they were not 100% walking according to TWI. It was the final straw in the paranoia that replaced the genuine concern at that time. You went from viewing your fellowship as your bretheren to the next possible closet homo or the next possessed person who was going to make you fall off of your walk. Either that, or if you were beat down and only 99.9% devoted to TWI, the person sitting next to you at fellowship could be the one that would turn you in or have revelation that you chose to go to a baseball game instead of sitting at home listening to the latest mandatory SNS like the HFC demanded.

Two adult hands up here, and one self-contained infant hand as well.

Beware! It's not just the Nigerians sending this email scam anymore!

I have a problem with the shooting looters thing, as it's illegal for the police to shoot people who don't pose a threat to them. If it's a looter with a gun pointed towards a cop or some innocent people, that's fine. However, if it's someone in New Orleans trying to swim through flood waters with a raft full of bottled water stolen from a destroyed grocery store that they are taking to their elderly neighbors who couldn't leave their house, I don't think they deserve to die. I think the normal law covers it pretty well. The police should try to arrest people they suspect are committing a crime, even if it is a Robin Hood type situation. If it is, that person will have their day in court and hopefully all will wind up ok in the end. If you kill someone, there's no undo button.

I would say that this list should be modified when appropriate, because for example, here in Houston I will never need firewood. I would also say that beer should be added to the list, as well as some powdered drinks such as powdered gatorade in case of extreme heat and sweating.

RumRunner, Thanks for the explanation. Next time, I'll read the documents you mentioned on the NHC website to make a decision. Do you mind if I copy and paste your notes as an anonymous set of information for me to forward on to a few people that I know.

I agree with ex70'sHouston. A lot of people wanted to leave but couldn't due to the unusually fast storm surge. Even though this storm had category 2 winds, the storm surge was more like a category 4 storm. I think that this should make NOAA rethink their categorizations of storms, because the wind speeds are not an accurate way to measure the storm on it's own. We also heard stories of people who had medical problems and couldn't evacuate. For example, there was a family that had an adult son in a wheelchair. The parents were going to move him out to evacuate, but the apartment complex shut off the elevators before they could leave. There was no way they could evacuate in time, so they had to shelter in place. There are a lot of reasons why people didn't leave. Some are stupid, some are not. However, I personally feel we should focus on helping people and saving lives first, and the cost of it should come later.

On the topic of high gas prices, at least here in Houston, the real problem is gas shortages. It's sort of a perfect storm of bad things -- refineries shut down, electricity was down for most of us and many people with generators had to power them, gas stations weren't getting deliveries, and price gouging is occurring. Unfortunately, I think the gasoline problem is going to be exacerbated by everyone going back to work. I have to report back tomorrow, my neighbors have been working for a few days, and the long commutes are going to cause the gas shortages to get worse.

Cool stuff. If you haven't been, I encourage you to go to Guanajuato some time and check out the places where these historical events took place. It's an amazing place. Also, there seems to be a lot of Mexican/Irish marriages. I know a lot of the Irish immigrants who were drafted into the U.S. army switched sides during the Mexican American war, but there's something more to it. I see a lot in common with the Irish and Mexican cultures, although I think the Germans had a bigger influence (at least on their music and their beer) than the Irish.

ex10, It's good to hear your power is back on and that you all are doing ok. I was going to contact you to find out if you needed a place to stay, but it sounds like you're set, at least for now. Take care and see you at the BBQ.

Good afternoon folks. I'll write something up real quick just to let you all know that my family and I are ok. The storm moved a bit so we ended up being on the eastern side of the eye, so we didn't get it as bad as other areas of Houston. We lost power Friday afternoon, it just got restored this afternoon. Our house suffered no damage that I've seen so far, other than a few plants leaning over and my fence leaning over. Obviously all our food in the fridge was lost, but I grilled up as much as I could and we drank all the beer (I would have done this without the storm, of course.) My employer ended up messing up and only sending a few people to Dallas because they made the gamble that we wouldn't have to go into disaster recovery mode. It was a gamble they lost, and it sounds like there was a lot of problems as a result. My thoughts are with those that are suffering, because as bad as it was for us to be without power for a few days, it's nothing compared to what others have been through. I've heard from everyone I know around here and while there has been some damage to property, it sounds like everyone survived without injury. Given what I've seen on my little 3.5 inch battery powered TV, I feel extremely lucky that we don't live somewhere like Galveston or Crystal Beach, which had areas of those towns literally wiped clean. No houses, no trees, nothing. Just a smooth area of ground where people used to live. It's horrible and I think the media hasn't been in to cover a lot of those areas yet, so this could end up being worse than Katrina in many ways. I encourage all of you to donate to whatever charities you feel might be able to help people out here. People desperately need it. Once I can find a place with gasoline, I'll run some ice up to some friends of ours on the northeastern side of town that got hit hard. If anyone is in contact with ex10 and if she is still without power, send me a PM please.

I can't elaborate too much, but I had gone in to work, and when the first plane hit one of my coworkers told me. I thought it was just a terrible accident. Later on, the second plane struck, and we knew that it was no accident, and that all of the news websites were too busy to function so we didn't know what was going on. Fortunately one woman had a radio so that helped, but they still didn't know anything either. We then found out about the other planes. I still remember being amazed by how horrific this was. I couldn't really comprehend all the death and destruction, and it didn't make sense at first why someone would do this. Later on, we found out, and I think it affected all of us, although at the time I was working with a few guys from the middle east, and I think it hurt them emotionally the hardest of anyone I knew. They were afraid to be out in public at all, and had a sense of shame about it even though they had nothing to do with it. Since these were my friends, I saw firsthand how tough it was to be them. Imagine a group of obviously arab men going to lunch together after 9/11. Anyway, after that day, I found out that a few of my friends from college were either there or en route there. One woman was injured and burned, but survived and is ok now. The other was on the subway, preparing to go for an interview at the WTC. I think she said she was running late due to getting her hair done or something.

Yeah, I think we're going to be ok. They were forecasting 100mph+ winds for where I live, now it's down to 60mph. If it were much weaker, I'd have to go out and play sideways football with a neighbor or something, like I did as a kid with Hurricane Hugo.

No need. He's a U.S. citizen, born and raised here. Don't forget that "Mexicans" were in Texas long before Americans were, and that they didn't go anywhere after Texas left Mexico either. What's funny is when you see a very brown-skinned, stereotypical hispanic with a name like "Jorge Contreras" who, when he opens his mouth, talks like Boomhauer on King of the Hill.

We're making plans to possibly move our operations to Dallas, but I haven't heard anything official yet. The only thing I know is that a few people are already going up there before the rest of us would be sent just in case. I'm hoping we don't go, but Houston is possibly going to be on the dirty side if this thing keeps sliding closer to us. Stay safe everyone.