Yeah, so back in 2009, and up until late 2010 or so, I took the bait and began studying with a a couple guys from the local Jehovah's Witnesses. As you can expect, it wasn't due to any sincere belief in their philosophy, though sometimes I wonder if on some level this may have been the case. On one hand, I was intrigued by their almost Rudoplf Steiner-esuqe dogma (though given the J.Ws emerged from the Adventist movement to begin with, I guess this is no surprise.) On the other hand, as with any other faith, the literalism can sometimes be a wee bit much to take. While I can appreciate their take on existence as a battle between carnal man (Ahriman) And the divine everyman (Lucifer) (edit: this comes from conversations with witnesses themselves, it isn't this baldface in the watchtower/awake!/whatever), the demonization of the everyman figure (which like Hebert W. Armstrong, tends to be labeled 'Satan the Devil", as if we're suddenly talking about furries or something HMMMM) is pretty difficult to accept in a metaphorical sense, let alone in regards to concrete dogma, so meh.

The other stuff prattled out by 'em was about as much as you'd suspect. The blood transfusion issue, while seemingly insane, isn't exactly baseless, as even today, viral epidemics can spring up out of nowhere, even if the donor claims to be it tiptop health. I've heard time and time again from people througout my life that, yes, you can "contract diabetes" from a donor batch . Granted, it's most likely that the donor had high glycemic levels (and the recipient JUST COULDN'T CHANGE HIS DIET, but ahwell), but then, we could all be wrong. The Provincial Health Boards of British Columbia flip-flop on their views of Lyme Disease's "existence" depending if they have enough funding available to treat you (and I've heard similar expressed concerns involving their views on HIV in recent years), so it's pretty clea something's up here.

But all things must close for a time, so I eventually dropped the weeekly bible studies, kingdom hall meetings, yearly conventions, etc, partially due to disinterest, but mostly due to my inability to follow through with anything in my life (and I _think_ we're I'm up to religion no. 43 at the moment...) So yeah, I've moved on.

Link of the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIxNpih1YNc

80's bud spencer movie about furry toon gangsters in human bodies (I swear to god I'm not making this up).

Much like Godfrey Ho/IFD/Filmark, the thing was filmed in English, bud everyone's been dubbed over by the gang of "3 guys, two chicks" at Harmony Gold's Intersound facility on sunset boulevard. Cam Clarke does a great (if somewhat familiar....) performance voicing "Tony Roma".

All for now, laters.