TrueTomHarley

They will have an underground tunnel next.

The Bluetooth keyboard won’t connect. The printer won’t print. As though in a conspiracy to infuriate me, they both rebel at the same time. So as to thwart them, I will deal with them just one at a time. The pre-installed batteries that power the keyboard couldn’t possibly be bad. I know this because all the online reviews say that they last four years—essentially, the life of the iPad—and I have only had this thing for 6 months. Besides, when I ask the geek at the store whether it is the batteries, he says “no”—it is the keyboard itself. “You think so?” I ask. “I know so,” he says. He must know what he is talking about. The online reviews tell me the same—the batteries are supposed to last 4 years, not 6 months. It must be the Slim Folio keyboard. I buy another—the are not too expensive. When I get it home, I discover (so I thought) what was wrong with the first one. There is a Bluetooth key on the upper row. When I hit it, it makes a connection. I didn’t know there was such a key. It must also have been preset. I must have switched it off by mistake. I take the purchased keyboard back to the Best Buy. Do I have the receipt? No. The clerk with the tattoos hadn’t given me one, and I didn’t say anything because I know that they send receipts by email these days. They searched and couldn’t find it. Why not? Because they had on file the old Juno email account that I haven’t used since Jesus was born, and for whatever reason, can’t get into anymore. I think I changed the once-simple password to something more intricate and then forgot it. As I recall, retrieval proved near impossible due to an archaic interface and a since-replaced laptop that crashed if you looked at it wrong.* At last, the salesperson finds it and the return is made. Back home, I find that my fix—the Bluetooth key—was just a red herring. Yes, I did get more life out of it for a few minutes, but it presently started to act up as before. It’s going to be embarrassing buying the keyboard again, and I am starting to think that maybe I should try batteries before I spring for a new board after all. They are the little coin-like batteries that I never use, and another reason that I just bought a new keyboard—now returned—is that I figured they probably cost as much as a Prius battery. Amazon can get me the batteries I need, also the printer ink, but it will take two days. I want them both now. I want the keyboard battery so that I can type on my iPad, not on my laptop as though a caveman. My wife wants the printer to work so that she can print out a letter from an expert saying that another refurbishing job that she paid through the nose for is no good and that she should get her money back. The Best Buy has those particular coin-type batteries, but only in a package of eight. They are not nearly as pricey as I thought—I found that out via Amazon—but I don’t need a 20 year supply of them. Wasn’t there a Steve Martin movie featuring him being hauled to the police station because, thinking that the world was out to get him, he had torn open either a hot dog package or a hot dog roll package so as to buy only the matching number of each that he wanted? And batteries are more expensive that hot dogs or hot dog rolls! If Best Buy doesn’t have them, with all of the electronics that they sell, there is no way that Target will have them. But the Target is right next door—it is silly not to at least check. Target does have them, and in just the number (2) that I need. The battery display says $4.60, only a dollar more than Amazon, and I can get them right now, even though I may not need them and have no other use for them should that be the case. The self-service kiosk rings it up for $6.99. I must have picked up the wrong pack, I suppose, and I go fetch another one. No, I did not pick up the wrong pack. It, too, rings up for $6.99. I return to the display. It turns out that the battery is being re-introduced in a new package alongside the old and both are ringing up at the new price that only the new one is supposed to ring up at. I don’t want the new. I want the old, and the old price. You wouldn’t think that one could get paralyzed over two dollars. But it is not two dollars paralyzing me—it is the thought of being played for a chump. “Forget it!” I mutter after a few trips back and forth to the register kiosk. I can get it through Amazon—why don’t I use them all the time, since aggravations like this so frequently happen?—and in the meantime I can make do with the laptop. I mean, for years and years I typed on the laptop, perfectly content. I can do it again for two days. Upon making this resolution, I leave to pick up some groceries at Aldies. The batteries might not solve the problem anyway—the geek told me they would not solve the problem—so if I am going to chance just throwing money away, it should be as little as possible, not the $6.99 Target wants just because they put them in a fancier package. After grocery shopping, I return to Target. In the greater overall scheme of life, two dollars is not the end of the world, and it is worth two dollars to use my iPad today and not my laptop because, long ago, I ripped the laptop cord from the laptop one too many times while removing it from my lap, and it will now only stay connected if I firmly tape the cord in place with duct tape. The repair will cost over $200! Forget it. Taping the way I now do is enough to power it, but not enough to keep its battery (another battery!) recharged, so I have acquiesced to the laptop being no more portable than a desktop, because if I even look at the thing wrong, the cord connection breaks even with the duct tape and, having no battery, the machine crashes and I lose anything I have not saved—the only benefit being that I have learned to save after virtually every sentence. So I want to use my iPad, which is portable, and I will pay two extra dollars to do that. Still, I grumble at the self-service line over the two dollars. “Do you want me to look it up for you?” the attendant who oversees four of these kiosks asks. I tell her no—it is just a price change, that I know this sort of thing happens—it is irritating but it is not her fault—why make trouble for her? Still, she can look it up if she likes, I tell her, mostly just so that she will get out of my hair and let me get on with shelling out the $6.99 that heaven has decreed I must before I change my mind again. She DOES look it up. She scans my package with her phone. She has software (I think) that permits her to see the display, and she sees the original price. Nah—that can’t be—still, she somehow figures the original price. She changes it for me right there at the kiosk, punching in some codes—using her powers. Finally! A hero in a world of villains! When she is busy doing something else, I double back to tell her that she truly made my day, that she didn’t have to do it at all, that I never expected her to, and that she would never know how much such a gesture of service meant unless I told her, which is why I did. At home, I put in the new batteries and the old keyboard works good as new. Even though the geek had said he KNEW that batteries were not the problem! Even though the online reviews said it, too, with batteries supposedly lasting the life of the iPad! (To be sure, I use it a lot.) One problem down—only one more to go: the printer that won’t print. I know it is not out of ink because it has an icon that keeps track of ink, discoverable in several different ways, albeit with effort, and each of those ways returns the same result—there is still 3/8 of a tank left. So I spend three years pouring over online documentation as to how to fix the sullen thing. Cleaning the heads does nothing. The store geek who does not know a dead battery from a keyboard is not going to try his hand at my printer—I refuse to even think of taking it there—even if he will do it for less than a million dollars. As a last ditch attempt before escalation, even though gauges say that there is no way that is it out of ink, I buy some more ink. Of course, I buy the wrong package, a package number that came up when I searched the printer model on Amazon. Why has not someone taken a stand on the biggest scam of all time—printer ink? Why are there dozens and dozens of printers, each one of which will take only a single specific pricey cartridge out of the dozens and dozens available? It is as though every single can of Campbells soup is unique and you will die if you eat any other than one out of 100. The politician that runs his platform on blowing the lid off this scam wins, as far as I am concerned. Funny, the printer model itself is not on the cartridge package that Amazon says should work, I note at the Best Buy, though every other model on the planet is. “Ah, well, if it is not the right one, I can always take it back,” I say, and indeed I do take it back the next day. I pop the new cartridge into the machine that insisted it did not need one, and it immediately prints like the New York Times running down Trump. Total price in money? Twenty six dollars Total price in time? Twenty six years Total price in aggravation? Twenty six thousand grey hairs. Total number of heroes? One—the kiosk monitor at Target. (Best Buy emerges from this post with a mild black eye, so I should point out that I have nothing against them. Their sales associates are polite, not pushy, and invariably will answer whatever you ask them. The point I am making instead is that tech is complicated and nobody knows everything. It was even a Best Buy sales associate who answered to my satisfaction why Microsoft gives me so much trouble (I have had updates that take hours) whereas Apple does not (I don’t think I have ever had an update lasting more that a minute or three). Microsoft is much more ambitious in the scope of what they offer, she told me, plus they have low price points that Apple does not. That satisfied me. It is annoying, though, that when you grouse about Microsoft online, thieves immediately show up insisting that they are them and ask for all sorts of access so that they can help you, and when they follow up with a phone call later, their English is indecipherable. One would think that Microsoft would shut them down, since it tarnishes their reputation. Later, I read that Microsoft did shut them down—it was an operation out of India—but later I saw that they had resurfaced—it is probably next to impossible to eliminate. Some less scrupulous companies have been known to kneecap scoundrels who tarnish their good name, but Microsoft is apparently too ethical to do that.) —————- *The old laptop: Modified from my book: “No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash”—the most autobiographical of them all: “The stupid thing is always pestering me that is nearly out of disk space. How can that be? It’s new—and I haven’t used it for anything other than writing this book! [Tom Irregardless and Me] The suggested tool to handle the error message launches into a circus of undiscovered galaxies! It’s like that Black Friday netbook I bought last year - another scoundrel! It harangued me unceasingly about loading Windows 10. Finally, I said ‘All right all right’ - load the stupid thing!’ It wheeled and cranked and whirred like Dr. Who’s spaceship, only to declare at last: ‘You don’t have enough disk space!’ and then launched a tool which took me to another planet! ***~~~*** “Just puttering along editing my document. Save a tweak and I get the message: ‘A file error has occurred.’ So? There’s no clue what to do about it. Or the consequences. Will a bomb detonate with the next keystroke? Or is just some tiny worthless snippet of software somewhere that feels it has to speak up from time to time so as to justify its existence? Aha! Close the document. Then re-open. I have saved every tweak up to that point, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. But when I reopen it, the changes I have saved have not been saved! No wonder people go mad! Before closing, it says a temporary file will be available! Where? On Jupiter? Open Word from scratch – it’s nowhere to be found! I have to re-treat the whole chapter! ***~~~*** “Okay, it doesn’t exist. That reassuring fix they were cooing about last night? That ‘solve-all’ dialogue box? It doesn’t exist! Or rather, it probably does, but only inside the 3rd module of the 15th lobe of the program designers brain. It’s impossible to find! Sure, I could find it in three days, possibly, but I don’t want to do that! I could have fixed the chapter by now by just writing it again! And I knew that’s what I should have done, I knew it! But, noooo – here’s some fine instructions – let’s follow them! See where it gets me! ***~~~*** “I have one book to write on my new laptop. Just one book! So I didn’t buy the $14,000 model. I bought the basic model, the cheap one. I’m not gaming with it. I’m not putting movies on it, or music, or photos, or even tweets! Just one book! One! And that’s not even on the hard drive, it’s in the cloud, and on thumb drive updates every two seconds, because you can’t trust this ‘Save’ feature as far as you can Spit! So why does it tell me every two seconds my hard drive is getting full? It just wants to make me mad! It didn’t say ‘Sucker Model’ at the store. It didn’t say ‘Gotcha’ Model. I asked the clerk if there were electronics inside the case, and he said there were! ‘Are you sure it’s not just gerbil cage shavings inside?’ I asked. He said he was sure! What a liar!” (Originally posted on my own blog)

Where do they say they erred? The very comment of mine that you quote gives an example of one. Go back and read it.

When they asked Don McClain what his song meant, he answered that it meant he would never have to work another day in his life.

You haven’t been around long enough to discern how it works here: CMP takes the snap and hands off to JWI. JWI looks for a receiver. TTH is way way out there, but usually flubs the catch. JTR is also wide open, but he generally gets distracted in cursing out the coach. Melinda looks open. So is Aruana. JWI throws, hoping for the best. Allen Smith, wearing a Guy Fawkes mask so that you don’t know which one he is, intercepts. He charges headlong and bloodies anyone in his path. He gets ejected for unsportsmanlike conduct. After a few such plays, JWI punts. Witness takes the catch and insists that she should have had the ball all along. Sometimes agent JackRyan takes it instead and calls up to a dozen plays at once. Either of them look for receivers. Matthew 457845 is open. So is Shiwiiiiiii. So is Srecko (hehehe). So is JTR, who technically is on the other team, but 85% of the time it is impossible to tell. The thrower hesitates. All of these receivers are known to be distracted by Anna’s smiley face, and whenever that happens, they either miss the catch completely or run headlong into the goalposts. Hoping for the best, he or she throws anyway. Allen Smith, wearing a Guy Fawkes mask so that you don’t know which one he is, intercepts. He charges headlong and bloodies anyone in his path. He gets ejected for unsportsmanlike conduct. After a few rounds of this, the Librarian, that old hen, blows the play dead, and calls for another one. Admin puts his head in his hands and cries. He once supposed that web hosting would be his path to respectability. Understand now?

Nothing sums up her work more than that, imo.

Doesn’t happen here. After all that I have said about the Librarian, that old hen, I am still here to talk about it. Mr. Admin takes his seat at the 17th Annual Conference of Internet Magificents. “Seen the latest stats for users on the WorldNewsMedia forum?” he casually mentions to the Reddit founder. “Pretty, impressive, isn’t it?” “Big deal, they’re all religious nuts,” the latter answers. Come back when you have people who don’t think the world is flat!”

It can be awkward running into one of these characters. Sometimes they start fights with us. Sometimes (alas) we start fights with them. Recently I spoke with one fundamentalist type and it threatened to go that way. Finally learning, after all these years, I said: “Look, you think we’re doing it all wrong. We think you’re doing it all wrong. We’ll steal members from your church in a heartbeat if we can, and you’ll do the same to us. Let’s just agree on those things. That out of the way, we were able to enjoy a fine conversation on the importance of faith and the challenge of maintaining it today, knowing that we could always come back and haggle out those things later. With liberal clergy, I sometimes just ask them to describe what they do in the course of a day. I don’t assume, as I might have when I was younger, that the answer will be: “Nothing.” Not too long ago I hopped out of the car to do a minister’s home. A sister of the old school wanted to accompany me, but I said: “No, you’ll get in a fight with him.” She felt bad, so did I, and I did apologize. Still, I know how it would have gone: ”Interesting. Thank you for that. Now let’s see what the Bible has to say.”

I did oversee the food line for a time. One of the prepackaged items was “a pasta salad.” Way back then, without any inkling as to what I would be doing today, I used to refer to them as “apostasy salads.”

Or maybe he’d show up at the zoo in his rhinoceros suit and step on someone’s toe.

Shh. don’t tell anybody. Besides, I don’t trust that JWI as far as I can spit. He is scheming to become top dog.

You would demand a scripture to prove that there were ones who took the lead back then? It is too stupid a request to countenance. I do not have a scripture to specifically say that first-century Christians used the privy, either. In the absence of one, I am going to assume that they did not. Prove I am wrong, lady. Where is the scripture?

Is even THAT not allowed in your book? What a very strange world you occupy.

The founder of the BITE model that is used to label whoever thinks out of the mainstream as a “cult” has just written a book entitled: “The Cult of Trump” about how that one employs aspects of mind control. When you think half the country has fallen under the influence of a cult, it is evidence, in my view, that you have drunk too much of the Kool-Aid yourself. It is also evidence that the entire BITE anti-cult model is no more than a leftest political philosophy that attempts to scientifically endorse a culture of victimhood and move it into protected status. That’s not to say that everyone who doesn’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses is a leftest. But those who don’t like them on the basis that they are a “cult” usually are. “Victimhood” overplayed is an odious thing. No one ever made a bad decision. When that appears to be the case, it is only because that one has been misled. No one has ever changed goals in life simply in the course of human development. When that appears to be the case, it is only because that one has been misled. And yet these same ones, who do no wrong themselves unless it can be blamed upon someone else, are the first to cry how others should be “held accountable” and must “take responsibility” for anything not according to their wish list of looking at things. What a culture of crybabies anti-cultism spawns.

Exactly. In the first century, Nero executed Christians en masse. What would Agent JackRyan, Witness, Srecko, Mathew457845, and Shwiiiiiii said about that had they been around back then? You know that they would be screaming at how incompetent and wicked were the brothers taking the lead in Jerusalem. Witness would have quoted half the Hebrew Scriptures in an effort to show how it was their presumptuousness that was to blame.

I agree completely! I always go to sleep when they do that. I don't see the point. In “Tom Irregardless and Me” I write that, when Tom conducts the Watchtower, he will milk that introductory paragraph, taking comment after comment about how bad things are in the last days, and then just when they are dying down, he himself will throw in that item about the rhinoceros at the zoo that stomped over that child, as though that, too, was a sign of the last days, and get everyone going again.

Haha, that would be funny. I don't think that will ever happen because it's too judgmental. But I understand your point! “Brother, when I hear you speak I marvel at the wisdom of Jehovah’s organization in cutting public talks down from 45 minutes to 30.” All that I will say on this is that the last meeting was enough to end my study with Santa Claus. He had. been making such good progress. I had finally gotten him to stop disrupting meetings with a “HO HO HO!” whenever the speaker made even the lamest of jokes. He had stopped pronouncing the elders “bad” when they asked him and me to take his outbursts to the back room. He had even said he was giving up the extreme sports stunt he pulls every late December, out of regard for appreciating the gift of life. It wasn’t the full beard the fellow had at the beginning that stumbled him. Nor was it the shaven-off beard that he had at baptism. It was the half-beard that he had at his study, thus indicating progress. Sigh...and he was a good study. His wife always served the most delicious cookies. I will weigh in on some of these other things, too, when I get a moment. Thought has gone into them.

What it proves is that when it is clear they have erred, interpreting scripture incorrectly, they admit it in print and move on—the very opposite of the line you and Witness are peddling that they hide their mistakes at all costs. The only one who says that it is impermissible for humans to err is you. They have never taken that position.

I would certainly never say that it was impossible. I took the word of some what I thought were respectable sources that the laws were not aimed primarily at religion. But sometimes even respectable sources don’t know their knee from their elbow.

Grumble, grumble. Do you think I can get my Scrabble-cheating brother to take even the slightest interest in spiritual things? But when it serves his purpose, suddenly he becomes a Fred Franz.

I had forgotten what he had said about Jehovah’s Witnesses. But it fits well with this remark from a Russian scholar: “Nikolai Gordienko, of the Herzen Russian State University in St. Petersburg, has stated ‘When the experts accuse Jehovah’s Witnesses for their teachings, they do not realize that they are actually making accusations against the Bible.’”

One young woman at the congregation meeting last night identified with the “missing drachma” parable of Jesus, saying: “When I put my hand in my back pocket and find some money there....Whoa! it is a big deal!” (“Betty Davis style” is how Bob Dylan said it.) I must admit that it inspired me to do the same, slipping a dollar into my back pocket, pulling it out and exclaiming: “Whoa! Look at this!” It was this illustration at Luke 15 that got her going: “What woman who has ten drachma coins, if she loses one of the drachmas, does not light a lamp and sweep her house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the drachma coin that I had lost.’” There is a not-so-hidden rebuke in Jesus’ words summarizing a similar parable: “I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous ones who have no need of repentance.” Well, they did—need repentance that is. Otherwise they would have been out searching for the missing sheep themselves: “What man among you with 100 sheep, on losing one of them, will not leave the 99 behind in the wilderness and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he has found it, he puts it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he gets home, he calls his friends and his neighbors together, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’” The context was that of the Pharisees sneering at the common people that they should have been tending to, even employing the pejorative term “ahhaarets”—“people of the dirt.” Straying a little off-topic, but still fair game, the conductor of that Bible-study portion explored how you wouldn’t want to come across that way in your own ministry: Bible principles are good and with them people mess up their lives much less than they would otherwise. Sometimes it works at the other end, and they succeed much more than they would otherwise. It depends upon one’s starting point. At any rate, come across someone in the ministry with a host of problems , and realize it could well be you in the absence of Bible principles—I mean, it is no basis for ever feeling superior, as those Pharisees did without ever mastering the godly ways. Again, not part of this particular study, but certainly in the same vein, was Jesus’ rebuke to those same religious leaders on another occasion: “But when the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they began saying to his disciples: “Does he eat with tax collectors* and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said to them: “Those who are strong do not need a physician, but those who are ill do. I came to call, not righteous people, but sinners.” Sometimes those who dislike Jehovah’s Witnesses trying to paint it they they have a high proportion of those mentally ill. I have no idea whether this is true or not, for mental illness defines the times that we live in, but I don’t even kick back at this anymore. Instead, I say that, if true, it is exactly what one would expect. I quote Jesus’ words that he came to call, not on those who do not need a physician, but on those who do. “Spiritually sick” is what he is talking about, but if spiritually sick, then maybe emotionally or mentally sick as well—sickness tends to overflow its category. The people you have to wonder about, in my view, are not those who experience emotional difficulties in the face of the present world, but those who do not—those who sail past atrocities on every side and remain undisturbed. The two Bible chapters up for review in that mid-week meeting were Hebrews 12 and 13. Discipline was a theme, in view of 12:7.. “You need to endure as part of your discipline,” the verse says. There was a video of a circuit overseer taking counsel from his wife as discipline. He was upset over someone he thought had treated him badly, and his wife said: “Well, that’s because he is a yo-yo. But so are you. Get over it.” [precise words mine, not hers] He told of how he had received a letter from the branch telling how he had botched something or other, and he counted that, too, as discipline. Sometimes we get counseled over various things. Still, the overall sense of Hebrews 12:7 is that even if no one ever says a word to you about anything, simply to pursue the Christian course in a world that either wants to change that course or have nothing to do with it is a “discipline.” The lives of Jehovah’s Witnesses might be described as ones of delayed gratification; they go light or even abstain from certain aspects of life that they would otherwise engage in for the sake of laying hold to a greater prize. That takes self-discipline. Delayed gratification is usually seen as a responsible thing, even by Witness opposers, but not in this case. That just pursuing the Christian course in the face of an indifferent or even hostile world is in itself a form of discipline is plain from surrounding verses, as well as the overall context of the Book of Hebrews itself. Those members of the Jerusalem congregation were tiring of holding the line. They “ought to be teachers in view of the time but they again need someone to teach [them] from the beginning the elementary things.” (5:12) Hopefully, they would be encouraged by the “great cloud of witnesses” surrounding them—not to mention Christ’s own example, so as to “not get tired and give up.” (12:1-3) “In your struggle against that sin, you have never yet resisted to the point of having your blood shed. And you have entirely forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons: “My son, do not belittle the discipline from Jehovah, nor give up when you are corrected by him; for those whom Jehovah loves he disciplines, in fact, he scourges everyone whom he receives as a son.” You need to endure as part of your discipline. God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? But if you have not all shared in receiving this discipline, you are really illegitimate children, and not sons. Furthermore, our human fathers used to discipline us, and we gave them respect. Should we not more readily submit ourselves to the Father of our spiritual life and live? For they disciplined us for a short time according to what seemed good to them, but he does so for our benefit so that we may partake of his holiness. True, no discipline seems for the present to be joyous, but it is painful; yet afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen the hands that hang down and the feeble knees.” (12:4-12) Don’t be a lout and don’t miss the point of God’s undeserved kindness [“grace,” many transactions say, but the New World Translation says “undeserved kindness,” since the former term just conveys to the modern man that God is not clumsy and doesn’t topple over things]: “Carefully watch that no one fails to obtain the undeserved kindness of God, so that no poisonous root springs up to cause trouble and many are defiled by it; and watch that among you there is no one who is sexually immoral nor anyone who does not appreciate sacred things, like Eʹsau, who gave up his rights as firstborn in exchange for one meal. (12:15-16) He is shaking the very heaven and the earth. He is not shaking the congregation directly, but it is sure to feel the aftershocks—hence the heightened need for the discipline of endurance: “Now the expression “yet once more” indicates the removal of the things that are shaken, things that have been made, in order that the things not shaken may remain. Therefore, seeing that we are to receive a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us continue to receive undeserved kindness, through which we may acceptably offer God sacred service with godly fear and awe. (12:27-28) (thoughts gleaned from the midweek meeting of September 23-29, 2019) *Tax collectors were the lowest of the low in popular esteem back then because they were not unknown to shake people down for, not just the required tax, but whatever they could get in addition.

Give them permanent “W”s

No. Unless she is very very subtle. The main thrust of the laws do not even specifically target religion, though she may be no friend of it. Others have point it that way. As to our reputation in the general world, I would put it: “When perusing religion, look for the people who are individually praised but collectively despised.”

AMC didn’t have a lot of money. They recycled a lot, often detrimentally but in this case for the better. Some of the best looking cars around were AMC but also some of the most hideous