Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Dear little L. Ron Cruise, come out so I can get to work

1:53 pm
Today has been a totally weird day. This morning I woke up late from a dream where my office was covered in ice and I had to slide down an ice-slide to get to my desk. My head was pounding so I took 4 ibuprofen and drank a glass of water to no avail. I watched Starting Over house (which is the best show on television) and got ready just in time for Lars to offer me a ride to work.
Now I'm here and I'm finding it (as usual) hard to concentrate on the ordering of books. For one thing, nobody will tell me if Katie Holmes has pooped out that Rambaldi baby yet...and I just can't make myself type in a bunch of isbns until I know if I should be getting ready for the great Scientologist revolution or not.
I read Janet Reitman's Rolling Stone "Inside Scientology" piece and I had a hard time understanding what was so controversial about it. She didn't really expose anything that I hadn't heard before. Let me say, before I really get into this that I feel slightly bad about mocking or calling out anyone's religion. I was raised Mormon so, I know what it's like to have most of the planet think what you believe is totally retarded. But, let me just quote South Park when I say, Scientology is "way way more retarded."
In fact let me get the Mormon/ Scientology thing right out of the way. People always like to talk about them in the same sentence... Especially Scientologists when they want to make themselves seem more "mainstream," which is awesome in its own way. When Reitman asked a leading Scientologist official why they charge (fucking crazy) amounts of money to excel in the church, he responded that well "Mormons make their members tithe 10 percent of their income." She just left it at that, but let me say this: Mormons do ask their members to tithe 10 percent of their income, but it is a percentage relative to their income. Scientology asks for the same dollar amount from its members for texts and "audits" regardless of their income. Scientology's salvation comes at a very specific price. Oh, but if you're too poor you can always become an indentured servant, working 15 or more hours a day in one of their many Scientology Centers for 50 dollars a week, never seeing your children (big thetans in little thetan bodies)...so I guess it's fair.
The money thing alone freaks me right the fuck out... but, once you start getting into the meat and bones of little aliens battling it out inside your body and generally making you feel crummy until you sit in a room with some douche, who hooks you up to a fake lie detector and makes you talk about all the bad stuff that ever happened to you, refusing to let you leave until you've had a "win" (or psychotic break, take your pick)... then, you've really lost me.
Supposedly my best friend Tom Cruise is an OT VII (Operating Thetan Level 7). According to the Scientologists Reitman interview, "OTs are Scientology's elite -- enlightened beings who are said to have total 'control' over themselves and their environment. OTs can allegedly move inanimate objects with their minds, leave their bodies at will and telepathically communicate with, and control the behavior of, both animals and human beings."
Oh my god. I think we know what happened to Katie now.

2 comments:

James said...

Indeed. It's handy to keep the following link around, in case you need to direct any potentially interested party to Hubbard's original OT-III writings, which is not quite as unreadable as Battlefield Earth, and is shorter!

http://sf.irk.ru/www/ot3/spaink-ot3.html

If you don't feel like you have enough dirty looks in your life, print some copies and hand them out to people in front of your local Celebrity Center (Centre?) or contact office or whatthefuckever.

Anonymous said...

OK, do Scientologists REALLY believe this shit? I mean, it's just a big joke right? It's so much weirder than any established religion (except maybe for the Urantia Book people) that I can't imagine anyone would be a part of it. But then again, I didn't figure anyone would vote for Bush in 2004.