James Thomas Rook Jr.

Every journey begins with a single step ... when you are going through Hell ... be resolved to GO THROUGH Hell, and not stay there. Emotional healing begins with getting some real tactile unconditional love. In the world they say "You can't get over someone, until you get UNDER someone", but since that option will get you killed, and worse ... again, I recommend puppies as a first giant step to good emotional health. The point is TACTILE love ... hugs, kisses, wagging tails, ecstatic to see you, ALL THE TIME. They don't care if you are ugly, crippled, brilliant, or stupid ... AND .. their love is unconditional if treated properly. They love people MORE than they love other puppies! It's impossible to be depressed, while laying on your back on the floor, with a box full of happy puppies crawling all over you !

As far as I know, San Francisco's Paladin never married ....

I agree 100% ... I would rather live in this time than in any other time in the history of human experience. I have been at death's door with my hand on the knob more than several dozen times ... yet, somehow ..... I still live. I thank Jehovah EVERY DAY for the circumstances of this time, and this place. I am a HAPPY MAN since I stopped letting delusional pessimists, and people pushing their agendas tell me it's all going to hell in a hand basket. IT'S NOT! (Circumstances may vary ... do not try this at home.)

I would? Now that IS news! Does your Mom know you are projecting again, TTH ?

Those that do not understand substitution think what I made was a flippant comment ... I assure you... it was as serious as a heart attack. Dogs are the ONLY THING ON EARTH THAT LOVE YOU MORE THAN THEY LOVE THEMSELVES. One time I was single for 12 years and I traveled with 11 aquatic turtles in my pickup truck camper. Taking care of an aquarium full of turtles ( red eared sliders ) in a camper was an ACCEPTABLE outlet for my loneliness from Jehovah's viewpoint. wIERD ... (WOOeeeOOOO), but acceptable. When I met an agreeable Sister I wanted to marry, I let the turtles go in the upper James River, near Richmond, Virginia. I hope they lived, and did well .... You do what you HAVE to do. Make a decision .... THIS I WILL DO ... and THIS I WILL NOT DO ... and be resolute. GRIT YOUR TEETH and dig in for battle., as the enemy is at the gates ! Find some acceptable "crutches" that WILL support you. Generally, "friends" and "good advice" is useless.

I can't think of a bigger point.than that one ! As I mentioned earlier, since we live in a multiverse, its not that big a deal in my not so humble opinion. The only problem is the date on the top of a calendar fills up the whole page. I think the headline is off... it does not terrify me ... If I am still alive, I am going elsewhere and elsewhen ... like evacuating for a hurricane. .... merely an inconvenience.

Get a puppy and become its best friend ... if that doesn't work ... get TWO puppies. It may not solve all your relationship problems .. but it may take care of 90%. This comes under the category of "Praise the LORD, and pass the ammunition." .. or for those Snowflakes that that offends, "Pray toward Heaven, Row towards shore."

OK, Ok, OK ... the aircraft landed safely and no one was hurt ... I was trying to protect her puppies from mob retribution. I started out with 16 joke writers, and JWI forced me to get rid of the last one when it did not go well .... .... sigh ...

FIFI sleeps with the fishes .... she took the aircraft's controls, but alas, it did not go well. No thumbs.

Actually, that is a mis-translation ... the first one should be PUS, and the second one PUL. And in modern times the Libyan Navy has glass bottom ships, so you can see the Libyan Air Force.

Actually, the Chinese text on the wall says "Light Sarch", above the pictures of piles of Laundry.

Well, I am a believer in the "Multiverse" theory, because I do NOT believe there is any such thing as "Dark Matter" OR "Dark Energy" which is a "black box" that NO ONE has the slightest clue what is actually in it. I could talk a week on this subject ... but ... The guy who invented the slogan for M&Ms "They melt in your mouth, not in your hand", Rosser Reeves, expressed it thusly circa 1960, in his poem "INFINITY" The probing eye of Palomar peers skyward to reveal A billion molten, fiery stars in our galactic wheel... And shows that even this great disc Is but a firefly burning, Within a much more monstrous wheel, Slowly, slowly turning. May not this next celestial wheel Be but an atom's glow in some big molecule of stars In some huge flake of snow? For may not space flow on and on from door to opening door, Like seas that open into seas and never reach a shore? If in our atom's tiny flame a billion stars are whirled And millions of these lonely suns has each a captive world, Just follow to the trillionth power and on beyond to see, What must be true when ciphers link down to infinity. Somewhere red planets swing around a triple silver sun, And pale, pale rainbows interlock their arches one by one. Somewhere, dark girls upon their brows grow curving, scarlet horns, And ride in tinkling gardens on great golden unicorns. Somewhere rains of diamonds fall on foaming, milk-white seas, Where rockets follow streaming light from star to star with ease. And soft-eyed girls with honeyed lips swim up to sing and free Their water-weighted lashes from their native shining sea. Great blue-white giant blazing suns control a thousand spheres Where reptiles march in glistening ranks and fight with jeweled spears; Where lizards lounge on ivory thrones And keep to weave and spin, to clean their overlapping scales, A smooth-skinned race of men. Somewhere crustaceans think like Gods and muse eternal laws And write the music of the spheres with clicking bony claws. Or beetles, fish and furry things emerge as sentient breeds, Or, working with atomic fires are thinking centipedes. Or, coal-black spiders sway in webs Beneath chill alien moons, And finger gemlike instruments to strum immortal tunes. Or serpent-men on serpent worlds evolve to racial prime, And glide in fourth dimensions where The riddle solved is time. For if there is no end of worlds and nature keeps her laws, Who knows which life will win which world: The hands...the coils...the claws? So feathered things and crawling things And creeping things all go Their separate ways on separate worlds, Around, above, below. If God employs infinity His wonders to perform, And there's no end of endlessness, Can there, then, be a norm? Would God give souls to sentient beasts Or would they still be clods? If evolution is God's way, Whose image, then, is God's? An endlessness of worlds implies a world of every kind: Worlds where our past repeats itself until the end of time. Worlds where our future's far events enact themselves before; Where every closing portal means another opening door. So if there is infinity, if endlessness is true, Somewhere, Napoleon walks again the fields of Waterloo; And somewhere, always, in the depths of time's vast shoreless sea, Upon the ghastly Hill of Skulls, Christ hangs upon the tree.

I find it BOTH fascinating and revolting that IN THESES CASES ... The Society's attorneys always try to claim "Clergy-Penitent Confidentiality Privilege". Every law I know about providing such protection is only effective for one person and ONE CLERGYMAN. "Confessing ones' sins", or ANY conversation to a Congregational Judicial Committee, which then writes a report which is seen and filed by the Branch Office, and the subject of telephone conversations when they do not want to leave a "paper trail", IS NOT PRIVILEGED. It is NOT a secret between two people, and God. There could be DOZENS of people involved. The fact that the Society's Lawyers try to change venues to OBSTRUCT JUSTICE, by DELIBERATELY making it difficult for plaintiffs and plaintiffs' witnesses to testify, as it was attempted in Delaware, means that OUR CONTRIBUTED MONEY .. is deliberately being used in MANY ways ... to OBSTRUCT JUSTICE. With all the many court "settlements" with plaintiffs, there is ALWAYS a gag order that the plaintiffs can NOT talk about it. One does that ONLY if one is ASHAMED of the answers. That makes me as proud of the Society and the Governing Body as Jehovah must be .... NOT !

Did you know that Martin Luther King, Jr, at the same time he gave his "I HAVE A DREAM" speech, was married, and had a mistress on the side?

DUH!

I got a good belly laugh out of THAT one. But then again, my grandmother had 11 children, and cried when she couldn't have more ... perhaps men are not supposed to understand how women think. Job's wife did all that without dying ... many women have died having their first child.

. . Well, TTH...um ... er ... WHOA! ... I don't know quite what to say about all that. ( ..... facepalms forehead ..... ) Well, um.. I don't watch movies that are horror pictures, per se ... so I can only imagine the reference. I have no objection, however, to a movie like "Schindlers List" which is a real life horror picture of Nazi Germany, or a movie like "Sands of Iwo Jima", etc. It seems we both like Clint Eastwood Films, where there is a LOT of killing. I thought his "Unforgiven" had some important themes. If you think my cartoons are stupid and vicious, you may possibly be right ... they are over the heads of most of the population who do not recognize irony, satire, and poignancy. Most people do NOT understand symbolism when it is nested. Nothing new there ...... My cartoons are only vicious if there is a TRUTH to them ... otherwise they have a comedic element, most of the time. I am NOT above blasting a vicious cartoon against deliberate EVIL, disguised as righteousness, if that is what I perceive, or shall I EVER be above doing that.  Opinions do vary, and since it IS about me (you made it so...), ya gets what ya pays for. If a conference in Heaven concludes I am no longer a villain, that will be OK with me. The lead in to that is somewhat ambiguous. Are THEY the GGs (Good Guys), or the BGs (Bad Guys)? Having loaded boxes into the back of Trucks for disaster relief from a Kingdom Hall in Missouri I am well familiar with the relief efforts the Society over the years has initiated. I was very disappointed about their fibrillating efforts after the Haiti Earthquake, where the only way they could get anything at all done was align themselves under the umbrella of the United Nations and the American Red Cross. That is why there is almost NOTHING on the JW.ORG website about that Haiti Earthquake relief efforts. As an aside .. The American Red Cross collected $448 million dollars for that effort, and two years later only spent $120 million in Haiti, and the Clinton Foundation was even worse ( SURPRISE! ). To be fair, I am an "equal opportuniy lambaster" I was not aware that the Congregations wasted dedicated funds .... perhaps you can give some examples that were so flagrantly obvious that like children, they had their properties confiscated, both real estate and their savings accounts for "rainy days"?  We shall NOW SEE how the Society ... from Central Control ... handles the millions ( literally) of details of rebuilding the properties that THEY now own by unilateral confiscation, and the BILLIONS of dollars it is going to take to do it in Florida, Loiusianna, Alabama, and Texas, etc., etc. etc.   THEY have the moral and financial responsibility, and may have to sell some or all of their multi-billion dollar stock portfolio to do it. This may bankrupt them. The "Four Hurricanes of the Apocalypse" will bankrupt many insurance companies. Guess what? Those future "rainy days" are HERE ... NOW! I see you mentioned the "A Team",presumably the TV show with George Peppard, to the best of my recollection, they shot tens of thousands of bullets from machine guns ... and NEVER HIT ANYONE. anyway, lets watch and see what happens with the total relief effort ... it would make a REALLY good book ... IF honest ! I have it on good authority TTH, that you yourself, under those superficial fabric coverings, are RUNNING AROUND NAKED! To the best of my knowledge I do not HAVE any living enemies ... so I can treat all adult people with the exact same respect, whether they find it offensive, or not.. Being brutally frank, and brutally honest only works with adult thinking people of integrity. People with children's minds are easily insulted and take offense at EVERYTHING. I had someone tell me, MANY years ago that I was "crude, rude, and a bore!" I looked her straight in the eye and replied "Oh YEAH! ... what's yer point?"

I hope they keep their priorities in order .....

I am not trying to denegrate ANYTHING, TTH , all I am pointing out is that the "Emporer has no clothes!", to those who want to remain un-punished, who see clothes when none are there! You are living in a delusional fantasy world of your own creation, TTH, and projecting what is happening to YOU ... to others. In DOZENS of posts I have pointed this out to you ... but the blinders you wear will not let you see anything but your poppin-fresh Pillsbury Dough Boy, agenda. I do not think Mickey Spillane had any friends in high places, and I certainly don't want any. His good friend was John Wayne, and he straightened out a script for the Duke, and the Duke gave him a car, but that's about it, to my knowledge. And I never did own my Kingdom Hall, or any part of it, it belonged to the local congregation until it was unilaterally confiscated by the Governing Body, as was every Kingdom Hall in the World. In tyrannical countries they call that "Nationalization", and the Governments keep the profits, and the citizens get to keep from being thrown in jail, or banished. Your entire post, from beginning to end, is based on a delusional fantasy and its projection. If my three Superman Suits were not being cleaned in some very large sunspots, I would fly over and straighten you out. Perhaps you could pretend to see MY clothes instead of my glorious naked super body. .

Tomorrow's forecast ... continued mild.

Hmmmm ... " Blood Brothers: Palestinians and Jews Share Genetic Roots" ..... I think there was a lot of clandestine crossings over the Jordan River in the dead of night to Fatima's Tent !

. No one on this planet has the SLIGHTEST reality based clue about what those "specific" signs will be. I could "admit the "possibility" that a common frog might morph into a velociraptor dinosaur ... or that if I get bitten by a radioactive spider that I will get super human powers and become a real "Spiderman" ( although the costume would have to be large, and lumpy looking ...). The ONLY fact in evidence is that I am admitting the ludicrous, insane, fantasy driven possibility! NOTHING MORE The rest is comedic drivel ... having absolutely no value at all .... except to trigger the imaginations of the incurably gullible, and mislead then leading them into believing a scenario that is NOT REAL. When you "play to the crowd", taking ADVANTAGE of their gullability and cause them to believe fantasys .. that shows a complete lact of intellectual integrity ... and is EVIL. Delusional fantasys, however, are often helpful ... for the survival of the human race ... they prevent many mothers from drowning their ugly children at birth.

TTH; THAT IS AN UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE ... only. If you pray for religious freedom in Russia ... and DON'T get it ... your prayers were not answered. The fact that traffic increased on your (edited) the Society's New York based website for two weeks following IS NOT a significant accomplishment ... and NOT what you prayed, and spent 20 million HOURS and 80 million DOLLARS for .... except in a fantasy world, agenda driven projection of the delusional. My guess is that 98% of these hits were Witnesses looking for an official JW.ORG response. If you pray for a car, and get a banana ... that doesn't count.

. . Eight Million Witnesses prayed to God for there to be religious freedom for them in Russia, and a mighty effort in accordance with those prayers, amounting to about 7 ( ... or was it 11 .. I forget...) railroad boxcars full of mail sent to the Russian Government. The international postage amounted to EIGHTY MILLION DOLLARS, or so, and the Russian Federation was given FIFTY FOUR MILLION of that 80 million dollars to deliver it at their end, by the Universal Postal Union covenants in place with all nations. For all we know, all that mail is sitting on a railroad siding outside Moscow, waiting for winter, when the paper will be burned in stoves to keep somebody warm ... fuel at the proper time, courtesy of the Governing Body. If I was a Russian Government Official, I would be laughing my head off ... and wondering to what good use I could make of FIFTY FOUR MILLION DOLLARS of "free money", courtesy of Jehovah's Witnesses. Other than that... week long and more prayers by eight million Jehovah's Witnesses. AND 80 million dollars in postage ......produced ZERO observable results. ZERO, ZIP, NADA, GOOSE EGGS. Chance and circumstances befall us all. There is no real FREEDOM ... unless it is actually that way. If this was NOT true, then FREEDOM would be a meaningless concept, and not really exist unless you had an "in" with that "cosmic butler in the sky" ..... ..... and God's sovereignty would be subject to a "vote". THINK ABOUT IT.

. . Actually, in modern time there is no evidence ... none at all ... ZERO, ZIP, NADA, GOOSE EGGS ! ... that Jehovah God has answered ANYBODY's prayers for safety, temporal salvation, or sustenance. No evidence whatsoever. When I pray , I thank Jehovah God for the circumstances that I live in the time and place that somehow I have survived, and that circumstances infinite and random have not yet (yet!) managed to kill me. Perhaps .. .PERHAPS ... Jehovah had something to do with it, but to thank him for actually SAVING ME ... when so many Brothers and Sisters, much better in every way, more theocratic and innocent than I am died ... ASSUMES HE KILLED THEM. or at the very least just LET them die ! YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS WITHOUT IGNORANT HYPOCRISY. 4,100 brothers and Sisters in the Houston area are reportedly now homeless and facing terrible hardship. Perhaps some since the report one, several, or many have died of hardship, or exposure, or other circumstances related to hurricane Harvey, but Jehovah had exactly NOTHING to do with who lived, who died, or who was injured. Chance and circumstances befall us all. If this was NOT true, then FREEDOM would be a meaningless concept, and not really exist unless you had an "in" with that "cosmic butler in the sky", and God's sovereignty would be subject to a "vote". STUFF HAPPENS ! Get used to it. Remember: Real EVIDENCE ( remember EVIDENCE?), evidence has to be based on FACTS, not speculation or wishful thinking. Prayer for our Brothers and Sisters is a very fine thing to do ... for MANY sound reasons ... but that is another topic. This is a RANT.