TrueTomHarley

I gleaned that I ought to ask you the question I just did. Did you, by any chance, get your anointing before coming to join the Witnesses?

We are famously loyal. Here’s what happens to the home of whoever says we are not:

Not that one. He borrowed it from me.

Only Jehovah’s Witnesses identify with the notion of just a relative few being anointed. How long into the JW faith were you before you feel you were called? How long was it after that before you came to feel the others were doing it all wrong?

This reminds me of an apocryphal story of a brother all nervous because he was to be working with the circuit overseer, and he wanted everything to be just so, something he never would have cared about otherwise. So he pressed his suit, but got distracted. ”Brother, don’t you have a suit jacket other than this one?” said the CO later in service, glancing behind at the heavy black iron mark on the coat’s back. Maybe this brother did the same with his best white dress shirt.

I can’t answer for Billy, but my aliases don’t bother me at all. Except for Top Cat O’Malighan. I caught fleas from him

I haven’t admitted all of them. There is actually nobody here that is not me. Even you are.

They are all renegade sheep that have bolted from the fold. I am here to lasso them, kick their butts, and make them behave.

Far from condemning Billy for having multiple personas, (if that is the case) I came to regard it as a pretty cool idea, and so I created A Nice Guy, Vic Vomidog, Dr. Adhominem, Top Cat O’Malighan, and a host of others. I am on the very cusp of creating the immoral woman Ida Ho. My characters do not upvote or downvote, however. They are all Jehovah’s Witnesses, or at least the product of one of them, and they do not vote.

Playing the discontent card, like Bruce the timeshare salesperson did, does not work with me or with anyone who has learned the secret of the apostle—how to be content with much and with little. The line “My kids do not stay at the Hampton” is likely to evoke even an wiseacre response, and when we arrived back at our hotel I texted to him a selfie of my wife and I in the long Hampton corridor—window and exit sign in the rear—and captioned it “Livin the good life.” I attached a smiley sign so that he would know it was simply a good-natured quip and not mockery. Photo: Blake Handley He would not have taken it wrong anyway, I don’t think. Introducing himself with many particulars, so that we would do the same and thus reveal how he might best sell us, he said that he was a retired detective from the Bronx. ‘This is a perfect job for a retired detective,’ I thought, and when I jokingly brought up his former occupation once again, he said “You think I’m not reading you right now?” I did think that. I liked this guy. Of course any experienced Witness ought to be able to do the same. I asked him whether real detectives rolled their eyes when they watched the TV detectives and he said that they did not. The show writers have real detectives for consultants and they mostly just spiff up actual cases to make them suitable for television—make the policewomen drop-dead gorgeous, for example. NYPD and Hill Street Blues were his favorites, he said. Photo: Andre Gustavo Stumpf The shows are so ubiquitous that it will be hard never to have seen one, but they were never staples for me, with the exception of when I worked with Gwen overnights at the group home and it turned out that she loved those shows, and the TV was in the central room like a shrine, virtually unavoidable, and so at length I figured ‘why be righteous overmuch?’ and I joined her in watching some. The joke became that the reason God created bad people was so he could have them killed on TV. The red wood rocking chairs are placed just outside the shops at Harbortown and the nearby lighthouse on television yesterday because the Heritage golf tournament was then being played on Hilton Head Island, and this is where all the fancy people hang out. Of the chairs, my wife said that it was no doubt done so that the men could there cool their heels while the women shopped, perhaps taking a cue from the statue of the kid reading. It was a good theory that I wanted to buy into, but it wasn’t confirmed by what I saw. As I gazed upon the moored yachts it occurred to me that, like snowflakes, no two are alike. It next occurred to me that my first occurrence was ridiculous—it must be possible to pick out models, same as with cars. In time, I managed to do so. The accessories and accoutrements were different, of course, but the basic boat was recognizable. At the next hotel, this time a Clarion in Savannah, as I was reaching for bread to make toast, I heard a tapping. I looked up and it was the matronly breakfast attendant, who glanced at the tongs I had not used, and all but said: “Your mama raised you better than that!”—even though I had had a clear shot at the bread and was (probably) going to be touching only the slice I was after. She was right. My mama had taught me better. And she would have given me the same scolding, only not so gently. That is something that’s not going to happen in your snooty timeshare, is it, Bruce? The next day we hunted up a Kingdom Hall and in attendance I sat behind a teenager who looked like he might not be paying rapt attention. So after the meeting, I broke the ice by apologizing to him. See, I was sitting right behind him, so he must have caught my singing full blast and that had to have been a trying experience. I asked him if I would be happy moving to Savannah, as some had suggested, but he said ‘Nah. It’s not all that great here.’ Trying to diffuse any tension that might have arisen by my being so much older, I told him how the hotel lunchlady had chastened me. He said that it was my own fault—I should have known better—you never reach for things with your fingers. You’re supposed to use the tongs. His mama had taught him that. There was not undue pressure on the timeshare tour, assuming one is not averse to sales. There only one rude moment, and that only for an instant, when the third closer abruptly wished us a good day and vanished, as though turning down her final reasonable offer was so gauche and unappreciative that it was really all a sensitive person could take, and perhaps knowing we had caused her offense and were about to let the deal of the lifetime slip through our fingers we would quickly call her back. We didn’t. I wasn’t scared of her at all. It was the lunchlady in Savannah that I was scared of.

I did go to the link, and that’s why I thought that you were a man. The first thing to meet my eye was “Hi everyone....My wife was the first one to call me an apostate.” If the wife called you an apostate, I figured that must make you a man. (Uh oh. You do not have one of those types of marriages, do you?)

Are you a man? I have always, for reasons that I cannot put my finger on, thought that you were a woman. This is not at all like the Librarian, (that old hen) who I keep referring to as a woman though I know very well that she is a man. I truly thought that you were a woman. And you keep dancing around my question: “Was there ever a time when you were happy with how kingdom interests were represented on earth?” Instead, you redirect it to a story of your “reawakening.” One does not expect an anointed of God to be so cagey in addressing a believer. Was there ever a time, in your estimation, that those responsible for the New World Translation, Bethel homes, Watchower publications, and pioneer slips, did it right?

As long as none of these personas are confused with Dr. Bob “Hammer” Urabi, I am fine. ”Hammer” is one of mine.

The last time I played this game with someone who had offended me, I kept holding out until at last the idiot cut off his head and slid it to me.

And when was that?

In.a review of the movie Inside Job, I wrote the following: As one senator (Ron Paul) pointed out, since the total bank bailouts eventually came to $17,000 per person, with no discernable economic benefit, you might have just given the money directly to the individual Americans. The results could hardly have turned out worse, and might well have turned out better. Debts would have been paid down, new purchases made, small businesses started. There is a reason that Big Business used to be counted in the triumvirate with religion and politics.

Will their rooms at Bethel be turned into public privies? Was there ever a time when you were happy with how kingdom interests were represented on earth?

When the online study feature first appeared, a local brother said: “I think it means that we’ve been fired.” I have been wondering when the organization would put it to some use. So far they have not specifically done anything with it. Here is an application I hadn’t thought of. It also works for persons who you find once and never again, also persons who other family members intercede for. Me - I am looking forward to saying to someone: “I don’t want to study the Bible with you. Do it yourself” The timing and circumstances will have to be just right, of course. But I would not mind a scenario in which I escape from trying to spoon feed persons one elementary scripture at a time. Most can do the basics themselves, which permits the publisher to engage with them at a higher level, say that of application, or that of specific questions. Frankly, I think it keeps us babes as well—always focusing on the basics. I’d rather farm that out to the extent possible and enjoy a ministry based on Bible 201, 301, and not necessarily just 101.

Okay, lets suppose I and my posse storm Warwick, round up the GB, and send them packing. Now what?

I think that JWI’s intentions are obvious - to demonstrate how modern printing methods improve upon typewritten lists.

Specifically, what would you change were it in your power to do so?

Let me revisit this. Why would it be wrong to say ‘celebrate?’ It exactly fits. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/celebrate Christ bestowed the greatest gift that can be given and he willingly offered his life in sacrifice so as to do it. Yes, of course it is proper to say ‘celebrate.’ Should I have said ‘Be kind to yourself, Lord. You will not have this destiny at all?’ Not to be mean, because you were not to me, but this smacks of a certain false piety to me, a certain sanctimoniousness, and a certain eagerness to harp over trifles. There is nothing wrong with the term so that you must correct it.

JW......John Wayne was in Vietnam? The same John Wayne who said: “If everything isn't black and white, I say, “Why the hell not?”

I did. It’s an expression. I didn’t wear a party hat. Should that not be all of them? How many did you find? Did you observe it in a private home or a designated place of worship?

Come on, Indiana! Show a little backbone, will you?