Stuff du jour

An Earnest Plug

Here's a plug for my favorite preacher: 

Matt Chandler is his name, and you can google him or grab a sermon download at: www.thevillagechurch.net.

Ever since I returned from Russia as a missionary and started studying theology in a dusty, tumbleweed of a West Texas town called Abilene, I’ve been in love with this guy…not actually in love with this guy, but you know what I mean.

Superlatives aside, all you can say is that this guy has the rare, rare gift of preaching—and I’ve heard thousands upon thousands of preachers. He’s the needle in the haystack. A guy who is HILARIOUS and has the unique capacity to burn hearts for Jesus. He preaches at a place called the Village Church, which is slightly north of the "L.A. of the South." He's crazy and goofy and he really loves God.

If you don’t want to change or become a better person, then don’t check him out.

—Ciao.

Or is it caio? My Italian-speaking cousin would know.

Rock 'n' Roll Time Jump

In the spirit of playful anarchy and magical rock ‘n‘ roll, here are a few bands I would see if space and time (not to mention gobs of cash) were like soft, preternatural putty in the palm of my hand:

1. The Replacements in their rabble-rousing heyday. Anywhere. Mid-eighties. Those were the days when a thankless shove from Paul Westerberg was like being kissed by the Pope. Authentic raw blabber and non-linear bass lines pulsating off sticky floors. This was post-punk brilliance at its finest, and the overrated Wilco should thank their lucky stars Westerberg ever breathed into a microphone, probably with bad breath.

2. The Beatles. The Cavern, 1962. Nothing like seeing a chubby John Lennon sweating like a pig. And the cherubic cheeks of Paul McCartney through the smoke of English fags (i.e. cigarettes) and mindless donnybrooks in this raucous Liverpool pub. This was long before Paul became a poet laureate and John a skeletal waif with the crazy wife.

3. U2 in Ireland, circa 1981. Well before I proposed to Christa in Chicago before the Vertigo tour in 2005 (I had to upstage Bono somehow) U2 was already big, way too big; they're bloated now, on a global scale, and the poor Irish leperchaun thinks he’s Robin Hood or Ghandi or something. Of course, he is, but it would be nice to see the spotlight shine on an earlier incarnation of this singular munchkin—the chubby one with the bleeding heart and Napoleonic streak, full of pluck and megalomania, gabbing up a storm about the mystical and the mundane and how famous U2 would be someday. Those were the days when you could enjoy an earthquake of rock ‘n‘ roll without having to save political prisoners with your cell phone.

4. Bob Dylan. Anywhere in Greenwich Village, New York, circa 1961. This would be the chubby (are you sensing a theme here?) baby-faced, homeless urchin with the corduroy cap and Woody Guthrie husk on his voice, cadging money with a paper cup in Washington Square Park, or the Gaslight, or sleeping on Dave Van Ronk’s couch. These were the pre-genius days, pre-psychotropic drugs, pre-ranconteur days, when Zimmerman was just another wandering pudknocker on the streets of New York, just as likely to sing you a folk song as to pick your pocket. He was also a natural salesman—he could sell a dead cat to your grandmother and you’d thank him for it. Oh, to have one's wallet stolen by Dylan in exchange for a folk song and a dead cat! 

   (photo: the little urchin in the flesh, probably wondering what kind of goodies are in his photographer's wallet)

5. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in some gritty honkeytonk in Austin. While we're at it, we'll go ahead and throw Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash in the mix. Must be a Saturday night deep in the heart of Texas. They will not sing "The Highwayman" in this scenario, though. 

6. A folk/blues songwriter-in-the-round campfire session with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Muddy Waters in Mississippi. Again, I don’t really care where this would take place. Lucinda Williams can sit in too.  It would be an honor if Ella Fitzgerald would also grace us with her presence with "strange fruit hanging from the trees," perhaps through the flames of a dancing campfire. Michelle Shocked can come too. Shawn Colvin, I wouldn't be bummed if you happened to be there with your acoustic Martin D-28 as well.

7. Bob Marley and his funky son, Ziggy in Jamaica. I’ll pass on the grass, though.

8. A gyrating Mick Jagger doing his wild and interpretive dance of St. Augustine’s “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee” (i.e. “I can’t get no satisfaction”). I love it when rock stars, or philosophers for that matter (please see Sarte and Ecclesiastes), preach the Gospel without even knowing it.

  (St. Augustine in deep thought: this would be the moral high point of this particular blog.

  (St. Mick in hypnotic snake-dance mode. He looks too zonked-out to be satisfied.)

9. Ryan Adams, any time when he doesn’t walk offstage in one of his bratty, primadonna, Westerberg wannabe, hey-look-at-me, mercurial mood swings; especially after only forty-five minutes of rifling through obscure songs, like he did when Christa, Casey (Christa’s brother) and I saw him in Minneapolis last year at the State Theatre. This was our birthday present for Casey and all we got was musical swill and a swift exit. There’s a reason you’re last on my list, oh bratty one.

So that’s all for now for my musical utopia scenario thingy.

Next on the blog docket….more funky G.R.E. words, my favorite Bible character of the moment (it changes all the time), 2nd Timothy and the prison epistles, and anything else that strikes me as blog-worthy way up here in cold and snowy and always-wintery St. Paul.

Insights From the Land of G.R.E.

In my quest to knock the stuffing out of the G.R.E. (Gargantuan Rectal Exam) rather than the other way around, I’ve been studying lots of words—words, words and more words: dry root words in dead languages, sexy French words, barbaric German words, old English words that have moth balls all around them, Slavic words that make you want to toss back the vodka (fond memories from living in Russia) and fiesty Greek words that make you want to swim in the blue Aegean sea and then ride a sweaty donkey up a volcanic island in the sun and then shower with Irish soap.

All in all, I’ve had a blast studying all of these words.

I’ve found that some words are sexier than others. And some words sound flamboyant but in reality denote something boring. Take the word “jejune” for example. Sounds very Euro-chic, right? It sounds like this word should be dressed up in white go-go boots and a baby doll dress and smoking a cigarrette in some pulsating nightclub at 2:00 a.m., doesn’t it? Not so. Jejune means boring, blah, dull, vanilla, as in “My…these stale crackers are so jejune.” The sound of the word totally belies its literal meaning. It’s a syntactical tease, promising a brilliant star but delivering a drab pebble. I find this odd and it makes me angry.

Second, some words are good but you could get your arse kicked at a party if you use them. Or at least your friends probably wouldn’t want to be your friends any longer if you dropped an “appellation” instead of “name,” or a “salubrious” instead of a “healthy,” or if you casually mentioned that your jello is looking especially protean this evening (i.e. amorphous and wiggly); and this goes double if you’re experiencing a dash of dyspepsia from a deleterious substance in your lobster, or if your puerile cat has necromorphous tendencies, or if your nom de plum  for your smashing new novel is Sebastian Tiger.

(That’s actually not a bad pen name, Sebastian Tiger. Hmmmm. I've got dibs on it now.)

The flip side is true as well I suppose. If another person at a party or a gathering casually mentions that "the pith of Einstein's theory of relativity was obviously outside of Newton's bailiwick" (I've actually been at "parties" like these), or that their brand new spanking BMW outside is a donatia mortis causa, or that they once had an incandescent metanoia (i.e. spiritual conversion), or that they currently struggle with papaphobia or necromancy or necrophilia, or any of the necros for that matter, then it’s time to leave for several reasons that go beyond mere word choice. At best your party could potentially upshift to a massive ministry opportunity. At worst you should be prized from such a bedraggled and fustian scene.

Some words are sheer fun because they sound so graphic and edgy (i.e. titillate, asinine, pusillanimous) yet they’re so...um...in the dictionary. (I used to throw these in my theology papers just for fun). Other words seem clinical and harmless, but they’re pottymouth and supremely naughty (no examples here).

I was struck by how many words—an army, really—there are to denote trickery or missing the mark of truth: dissemble, dupe, blandish, inveigle, cozen, chicanery, legerdemain, bilk, canard, skullduggery (please nobody take that word…that’s my favorite new word), causuistry, specious, meretricious, verisimilitude and I’m sure there are many others but these are the ones I remember.    

I love the word splenetic and I don’t know why.

Some words are like clouds that float above you way up in the sky as they slowly move past wherever you are—amporphous blobs of syntax. You’re not sure what they mean because they’re always changing shape and people sometimes misuse them and then you wonder if they know they’re misusing them or perhaps they’re adding their own subtle twist to a secondary definition—or maybe you missed out on that memo that said “diaphanous” means glorious and vague instead of thin and flimsy...or maybe you should quit reading the New Yorker altogether. That magazine kind of sucks anyway.

I also love the words sodden and slugabed. Desuetude is currently in a state of desuetude, though, it has to go; it’s so jejune and all.

And don’t forget: You can be demotic without being demonic, you can be imperious without being impervious; heck, you can even be quixotic without being quotidian…but you cannot (and I can’t stress this enough) simultaneously have simian cheekbones and an aquiline nose and a bovine jaw. People need to get that into their human skulls. Maybe I’ll work that into my G.R.E. essay. 

What else? I’ve got to go to work at my non-sinecure position at a bank. So this is my penultimate sentence.

And this is my valedictory paragraph...so long.

Blessed are the Meddlers

Check out my baby's book, Blessed Are the Meddlers. It's a humdinger, and my standards are fairly high when it comes to novels.

She’s out west of the Mississippi and somewhere south of purgatory (i.e. Colorado Springs) promoting her phenomenal book, Blessed Are the Meddlers, to all who will come and listen.

Here’s a copy of the thing:

(An impish Wynona Rider lookalike—perfect for the slighty mischevious Sydney)

And since I wrote her official bio (yes, the one about the loquacious author who loves to talk talk talk but who is also literary enough to write write write—a rare combination in any solar system), it’s no secret that I’m a proud fan of her work. Her wholesome-yet- flirty heroine, Sydney, deserves to be on the silver screen in the following cities: L.A., Chicago, London, Moscow, Coca-Cola, Dallas, Bucksnort, Paris, Rekjavik, Seattle, Irkutsk, Abilene, St. Paul, Nashville, Glascow, Scranton and a whole host of other cities and towns that show sparkling and wholesome films.

Of course the rights need to be optioned first. In the meantime, buy this book for your daughter. Two for your cousins. Five for a rainy day. A baker’s dozen for all of your lovelorn, cynical friends who are sick and tired of dating Joe the Plumber (no offense, Joe, I think you’re way cool, but I’m a guy) again and again and again and again and again. 

(Blog intermission: Poor Joe, he’s being lionized and lampooned all over the country, and now I’m riding the plumber wave all the way to Amazon.com and back again on behalf of a worthy book, down the swirling vortex of an Ohio toilet and sideways through a pipe and up and into the belly of your local water cooler scuttlebutt, just in time for the weekend zeitgeist. I repent in dust and toiletries.)

I have no idea what any of that meant.

As I was saying, buy a whole bunch of books (i.e. Blessed Are the Meddlers books) for a whole bunch of people. You’ll find a good friend in Sydney and a unique literary voice in Christa.

And if you happen to be aimlessly wandering around south of purgatory, stop by your local Barnes & Nobles. It's Saturday (as in tomorrow, the 18th) @ Barnes & Noble (across from Citadel Mall) 2:00 pm in Colorado Springs and on Sunday 19th (as in day after tomorrow) @ Barnes & Noble 2:00 pm in Littleton, Colorado.

So get your weekend arse out there and say hello and buy a book or twenty-seven thousand.

* Postscript: It's been several days since I first published this blog, and I must say that I don't like the way Joe the Plumber has been pilloried by the press. For the record I think he's a stand up guy. I like him a lot. So, please forget the above implication that he's a lumbering Neanderthal. In other words, if you're a single gal, then please go getcha some of that. Make posthaste and date Joe the Plumber!!! You can thank me later.

 

Skullduggery and Stuff

So it’s been ages and ages since I’ve last blogged. I know: Sue me. And if you’re a Scientologist with a litigious trigger finger, please don’t take me literally.

Since I’ve last splashed around in the blogosphere, I’ve been consumed with work, G.R.E. prep, work, more work and re-runs of Felicity...pre-sophomore haircut:

Christa and I absolutely love this show. It’s a humdinger! I’m man enough to admit this. In any case, J.J. Abrams had to start somewhere before his hit Lost series, didn’t he? It’s not nearly as girly as Gilmore Girls, which I was also man enough to watch all seven seasons.

And hey!!!…before you write me off as some kind of a cultural lightweight, I also loved the bloody horsehead scene in the Godfather, as well as the dead-monkey vignette in Sunset Boulevard, which could very well be my favorite movie of all time, as well as basically anything with blood and a bang-up script. I hate Scorcese’s films, though. Way too long. But we’re wandering way off our designated topic for this fine evening: What can the Church learn from Scientology?

If this is your first visit to this blog, then I encourage you to go back and peruse some of my past blogs on my first-hand adventures with this skullduggery of a cult. These blogs may or may not freak you out. I hope they do, though, at least to the extent that you never visit their church. You’ll be glad you didn’t.

In any case, there’s everything in them from skyscrapers to pixie dust to a veritable cat-fight. I recently re-read these blogs and laughed out loud a few times (I love it when I crack myself up); yet shortly thereafter I had a horrifying thought that sent a horrid, Halloween chill up my spine: What if some innocent reader mistook my tone of levity for fun and games, and decided to visit a Scientology church just for a trick or a treat, or for a laugh, or a titillating story to tell for Hallow's Eve.

Please don’t. This is a serious cult. Again, the word skullduggery comes to mind. Suffice it to say, these people get inside your head. I failed to mention earlier that I had wacky dreams for at least a week after we visited this epicenter of madness. These dreams were more disturbing and bizarre than a Yoko Ono art exhibit during her psychotropic years.

And this leads me to my chief thesis in my final analysis of this cult: Scientology wields power in proportion to how broken a person is. Let me repeat this assertion of mine. Scientology wields power in proportion to how broken you are. And by that I mean this: If a person is self-sufficient and autonomous, then L. Ron Hubbard’s zany cosmology and fey explications of human existence have little effect. This is why the Scientology-sponsored film Battlefield Earth starring John Travolta sold approximately seventeen tickets. It was nonsensical and most people knew it. Yet this is also why Lucy (she's the motherly tour guide who showed Christa and I around the Minneapolis church) did not sit us down and give us popcorn and show us Battlefield Earth. She simply steered every portion of our conversation back to Dianetics—Hubbard’s popular book that has sold a gazillion copies.

She knew what she was doing. What is the origin of evil? Read Dianetics. Where does mankind come from? Read Dianetics. What did Hubbard think about Jesus or the God hypothesis? Oh, read Dianetics. It’s all in Dianetics.

So, back to my thesis, my broken thesis.

Scientology preys on broken people. Many of them creative types. This is what their notorious e-meter is all about. Hook them up and get them talking about their deepest fears and wounds. Use these fears and wounds to sell them “auditing” sessions. And then further use these fears and wounds as formidable weapons in case these broken people decide to leave, wallets in tow. 

That’s what Scientology is ultimately about. It’s about lucre, plain and simple.

As far as the broken aspect is concerned, thankfully, God broke me a long time ago. He really broke me and then He really filled me up with Himself. God absolutely broke me and He absolutely filled me up with Jesus. This is me being neither proud nor humble—it’s the truth. The process was painful but the result was nothing less than salvation in every sense of the word. 

My only point is this: Had Lucy or Lady Clarity gotten to me before Jesus did, then I might be slavishly following the wild imagination of a sci-fi writer whose bronze bust looks like a dead fish.

Thankfully I’m not.

As far as what the Church can learn from Scientology, I had this rather sanctimonious essay in mind about the Church paying more attention to broken people—i.e., the outcast, the disenfranchised, etc. And while of course I believe that, I’ve suddenly turned sour to the idea of holding up Scientology as a paragon of virtue (albeit analogically), or in anything more than an opaque light.

Amen. No more blogs on Scientology. I’m through with this skullduggery (in case you haven't figured it out, I love this word...so apropos). I’m now eager to blog about topics that are less greasy and way more noble, like the monstrous genius of Felicity...pre sophomore haircut of course.

Thanks for reading. Till Iggy pops....

A Chat With L. Ron Hubbard

So it was time to make like Tom and cruise.

We’d had enough of being zapped with electricity, interminable videos, pristine teeth, mythological pixies and vanishing tour guides.

Add to that one unforgettable conversational ice-breaker (i.e. “I’m clear!!!”) and the writing was clearly on the wall.

And the writing read something like this:

MAKE LIKE TOM AND CRUISE!!!

NOW!

So we did. Yet not before I sauntered over to the bust of L. Ron Hubbard to take another look. It intrigued me to no end. Here was this metallic bust of the founder of Scientology; even though it was eye-level, it seemed to loom over the entire center like a cheap golden calf, only it was bronze. And instead of a calf there was this odd cranium of a man looking quite befuddled and serious.  His lips were stuck out and it looked like he was in deep thought, or worse…a cadaver working up the courage to lean in for a frozen kiss.

I took a step back in case this was for real.

How diminutive! How bronze! How odd! I was struck by how cheap-looking the entire statue was. I knocked on Hubbard’s skull: Clunk, clunk, clunk. It was hollow inside. This looked like something that could be on sale at the Dollar Store.

I contemplated the contemplative guru. I desperately wanted to ask him some questions, such as: Did you really believe all of the sci-fi stuff that you wrote about? Did you really believe that Jesus was a false dream implanted in our minds by an evil galactic warlord named Xenu? Billions of years ago? Did you really espouse a philosophy of love and “fair game” (i.e. a vindictive call for violence to all enemies of Scientology—especially non-sympathetic journalists…bloggers?) in the same breath? Did you really plan to court Hollywood for their money in exchange for stroking their egos by calling them (i.e. OT level 5) “a cut above man”?

I wanted to whisper in his ear: You hoodwinked all of these good people. You bilked millions of people out of their savings. You suckered poor Lucy—sweet Lucy—into devoting her life to your cause. Your cocksure prose penetrated deep into the psyche of Lady Clarity, seducing her with your zany cosmology and grandiloquent style, which groomed her overweening pride and deluded her into thinking that she was some earth goddess who could float in and out of other people’s conversations. You kickstarted a cult that has crawled all over the planet, raised all sorts of hell and mayhem, and all you got was this lousy bronze bust. I’m not sure exactly where you are, but wherever you are I’m sure it’s exactly where you need to be. Tell Joseph Smith I said “hello.”

So I was through hypothetically tough-talking a dead bust.

Now it was indeed time to cruise. So we did. We said goodby to Lady Clarity and Lucy (we found her hiding in a cubicle) and the nice receptionist. As we walked toward the door I waved goodbye to Lady Clarity.

She waved back to me with the curious expression of a loving mother and a jealous, neurotic ex-girlfriend.

(for the record, this is not Lady Clarity. Only my interpretation of her farewell wave, which left an indelible impression on my soul)

As we opened the jingly door to leave, we heard a soft and soothing “Au Revoir” waft into our eardrums.

Did someone just say goodbye to us in French, or was that just our imagination???

In any case, we walked outside into the night sky. Gone was the apocalyptic, Bloody Mary sunset. The stars were out in full force, and the moon looked like a sliver of a hangnail over a Minneapolis skyscraper. And even though it was now dark, we experienced the strange phenomenon of blinking wildly, as if we’d just walked out of a dark movie theatre into the blinding sunlight.

Our conversation as we walked on the sidewalk went something like this:

“Wow!”
“Wow!
“That was…”
“Wow!”
“Totally!”
“That was…"
"Wow!"
“Did you see how…”
“Totally!”
“And then she…”
“Totally!”
“And then..”
“Wow!”
“Wow!”
“That was…”
“Wow!”
"Wow!"
"I should blog about that..."

"Totally."

THE END

Stay tuned for the final installment on this whatever-you-call-it series: “What Can the Church Learn from Scientology?”

Lucy and Lady Clarity

So Lucy led us into a drab room that was grayer than Gandalf’s beard, with two chairs  and a television and lots of posters of the eccentric Hubbard on the wall. Lucy popped in a video on the virtues of auditing. It involved a slew of Scientology actors with very white teeth who talked about  “engrams,” “auditing” and how all we store up negative thoughts subconsciously through a random series of haphazard events.

Lots of strange stuff here (I could probably do a dozen blogs on this video alone), but we must move on to other things.

After the video was over (it was over forty-five minutes long), Christa and I were ready for something else. I found Lucy in the main room, as I had a couple of questions that I wanted to ask her.

“First, how did you like the video?” Lucy asked us.

Our reply was something to the effect of either “very interesting” or “quite fascinating,” neither of which were lies.

Now it was my turn. “Why does so much controversy swirl around Scientology?” I asked Lucy. She had a swift and easy answer: “Money. The media wants headlines because headlines generate profit,” she said.

“Yet why do they pick on Scientology as opposed to something else?” I asked.

“The pharmaceutical companies are in bed with the media,” she said. “Scientology takes away from the pharmaceutical companies’ profits.”

Okay, so Lucy was quick with a quip. Not a bad spin-czar. My guess is that she’d had lots of practice answering those questions.

I also wanted to know more about this whole “clear” and “pre-clear” thing. Earlier Lucy had told me that, despite being a Scientologist for over ten years, she had not yet attained “clear” status. I was curious to know if becoming “clear” was something that Lucy longed for. Yes, Lucy said, and the length of the process varies from person to person, depending upon the number and severity of the “engrams” that a person dealt with. It all depends.

At that time the receptionist was walking by, and I asked her how long she had been a Scientologist. “Two years,” she said with a smile as she joined the circle of our conversation. I asked her if she was “clear” yet. “Not yet,” she said. “I hope to be clear someday, though. What I really can’t wait for is…”

“I’m clear!!!!”

We looked and there before us was this woman with dazzling white teeth. She had blonde hair and wore a blue pin-striped pantsuit. She seemed fifteen-feet tall. Her eyes were guacamole-green. Her face was beaming.

Christa and I looked at each other. Who was this woman? Where did she come from???

This woman had literally popped out of nowhere. How had she jumped into our conversation? Had we been miked??? Were we getting too nosy?

All of a sudden I noticed that Lucy was gone. So was the receptionist. They had completely vanished. As fast as this woman had appeared, the others had disappeared into the cracks of oblivion. It was as if this mysterious woman had brandished a magic wand out of nowhere, and with one poof of a poff they had were no more—gone.

Where did they go????

Now before us was this Wonder Woman/super Scientologist with sparkling white teeth. Her face was beaming like a supernova from a distant galaxy. Her eyes were full of strange, green mirth. Her energy level seemed olympic. She looked like a Manhatten skyscraper shrouded in pixie dust—a cross between a mythological sea nymph and Elizabeth Hasselbeck.

Her confidence was undeniable. She was more charismatic than Lucy. More maternal than Lucy. More beaming than Lucy. More blonde than Lucy. More everything than Lucy.

For a split second I wondered if I would have to fight her. Granted I was had the edge on her in terms of height and weight, yet she had an inner moxie that should not be underestimated.

She was clearly a force to be reckoned with:

“So, you’re clear?” I asked, trying to gain my footing in this out-of-the-blue conversation, still wondering if I was going to have to fight her.

“I’m clear,” she confirmed, still beaming.

“How long have you been clear?” I asked. This seemed like a good next question while I figured out:

a)    What was going on
b)    Where this woman had come from

“Two years,” she said. “It took me five years to become clear.”

“Wow! That’s fast,” I said. Maybe if I flattered her we wouldn’t have to joust.

She talked a bit about the stages of maturation, and how there were a whole host of subjective factors that went into determining clarity—none of which were concrete or fixed.

“So, reaching ‘clear’ status is not about how long you’ve been a Scientologist,” I said, “but it’s primarily about…”

“Growth,” she finished my sentence.

“Growth.” I repeated.

“Absolutely,” she said. “It’s all about growth.” And then, almost as an afterthought, she added: “And some (Scientologists) grow faster than others.” 

Poor Lucy!!!!, I thought. No wonder she had split the scene. I truly felt for her. In any case this seemed to be nothing less than a Scientology cat-fight. The “clear” star of the show was here, and Lucy and the other “pre-clear” woman had exited stage left, fading into the woodwork along with the other “pre-clears” in the animal kingdom. I wondered what the backstory was between Lucy and Lady Clarity (in the absence of a formal introduction this is what I am calling her); I didn't ask.

So Lady Clarity stood before us. Her confidence was undeniable. She was clearly proud of being clear. There was a good chance she was the mother hen of this entire branch. A few young men lingered in the background, but it looked like Clarity could eat them with her award-winning teeth. Yes, she was the head of this entire operation; maybe, maybe not. Whoever she was, she seemed to have some semblance of authority. She was confident of herself, of this place and of her place in this place.

After a couple of minutes of meaningless chit-chat, I decided to put Lady Clarity’s confidence to the test.

“Mind if I take a look around?” I asked

“Not at all,” she said, and blinked a few times.

So I left Christa with Lady Clarity to chat (Christa can talk to anyone about anything for any length of time), and I went to off explore the joint. I saw a couple of young bucks watching me but I didn’t really care. I had the blessing of Lady Clarity to look around, and, like I said, she could eat them.

I didn’t expect to find much. It’s not like they were going to leave their secret manilla folder behind the bronze bust of L. Ron Hubbard, or hide exotic paper currency from a far-off galaxy 'neath the e-meter machine. Nevertheless, I took the liberty to look around.

First I went up to a massive bookshelf and flipped through the books. It was quite a selection: L. Ron Hubbard. L. Ron Hubbard. L. Ron Hubbard. L. Ron Hubbard. And then another one: L. Ron Hubbard. I looked for Hemingway but to no avail. No Kerouac. No Shakespeare. Not even a Grisham thriller. There were no books on science. And the history section was a bit slim. No Augustine.

I did find a poster on a cubicle wall that read something to the effect of “The Fifteen Commandments of Scientology,” one of which said that “Man is basically good.”

“Man is basically good.” I looked at it and I mulled it over for awhile. “Man is basically good,” I said it out loud to hear how it sounded: “Man is basically good. Man. Is. Basically. Good. Basically, man is basically good.” It sounded nice, actually. In fact it rolled of my tongue rather smoothly: “Man is basically good.” Interesting, I thought. I wonder what the victims in Auszwitch would have to say about that one.

I glanced back over at Christa and Lady Clarity. They were chatting away like old friends. I saw Lady Clarity casually glance over at me a couple of times. I knew that my freetime of snooping was rather limited, and quickly melting away. I had two, maybe three minutes before time was up, and Christa and I would be officially personae non grata and shown the door…maybe we would be thrown out by a couple of muscle-clad, elephantine bouncers (for the record, I didn't see any muscle-clad bouncers); in any case, it was nearing time to go.

Yet there was one thing that I had been dying to do ever since we’d been in this eerie place. And it was now or never… 

…more later.

Postscript: By the way, thanks for reading. I've gotten way more hits on this blog than I ever imagined I could for a first month of blogging. I'm not sure who all is reading it, but whoever ya'll are, thanks for dropping by and stay tuned!!!

Lucy in the Sky With...Dianetics

It’s one thing to encounter the strange when you’re expecting the normal, it’s another thing altogether to encounter the strange when you’re expecting the strange...the latter of which is exactly what happened when Christa and I sat down with Lucy (an affectionate sobriquet) in the downtown Minneapolis church of Scientology.

Still a bit punchy (or maybe spooked is a better word) from agreeing to be hooked up to the notorious e-meter and getting zapped with a modicum of electricity, I was eager to move on to the less physical portion of our evening.

The illustrious and inimitable e-meter:

          (note: These are not my real hands)

We sat down at a spartan wooden table near the window. For the record Lucy was very friendly. We liked her. She was chatty, maternal, warm, professional and maybe a bit broken: She had the sad eyes of Paul McCartney.

All in all I spoke with Lucy for around forty minutes. My questions ran the gamut: We covered everything from Tom Cruise to pharmaceutical companies to imported beer to Plato’s chariot metaphor; suffice it to say much of what we talked about falls outside the sphere of this blog. Yet with respect to the basics of Scientology, here’s what Lucy told me.

The crux of what Lucy told me is this: There are two parts to our minds: the analytical mind and the reactive mind. Our analytical mind is our mind as it was meant to function—our pleasant memories, mathematical capacities, etc. We have many categories in this analytical mind (close to eighty, she said) and they all have different functions. The “reactive” mind is the part of us that stores all of our negative experences, almost visually stored like a camcorder. Every negative thought that we have had in our lives, every embarrasing experience, every fear, every heartbreak is stored in our reactive minds, most of them unconscious. The purpose of “auditing” (which is a counseling type of procedure of self-discovery that is clearly laid out in Dianetics) is to help us uncover these “engrams” (i.e. negative thoughts) and to gain a “win,” which would be a complete removal of the specific engram. An auditor functions much like a cabinet file retriever, helping the auditee retrieve the engrams from their files. The upshot is that the auditor can in essence zap these bad memories, which they do by saying the word “cancel” at the end of each auditing session. Many points of contact with hypnosis (my comparison, not hers)...

When I asked Lucy what “auditing had done for her,” she told me that over twenty years ago her daughter had severe allergies, and auditing helped her daughter overcome it. This was the chief reason for Lucy’s becoming a scientologist thirty years ago.

Switching gears a bit, my eschatalogical curiousity got the better of me.

“What happens to us when we die?” I asked Lucy. “Does Scientology believe in a heaven or a hell?”

“You can go wherever you want to go,” said Lucy.

“Really?”

“Absolutely. If you want to go to heaven, you can. If you want to go to hell, then you have that option as well.”

I paused a bit before I asked my next question, searching for the right tone (I didn’t want to come across as smarty-pants) I asked the somewhat obvious: “With all respect, why would anyone want to go to hell?”

“Oh, you don’t have to,” she said. “That’s the beauty of it. Read Dianetics, it’ll explain everything.”

I looked over at the stone bust of L. Ron Hubbard, and I swear I saw it wink.

  (note: Not L. Ron Hubbard)

“Would you like to watch a video?” Lucy asked us.

"Sure."

After all, what’s a video after being zapped by an electric Tonka Toy????

Stay tuned for the rest of the story…

The "Truth" in a Manilla Folder: A Primer on Scientology

Okay, so we had a short detour into the “bluesy” pop riffs of one John Mayer.

Now, we must get back to the stone countenance of one L. Ron Hubbard.

Before we move on with our hair-raising narrative, here is a short primer on the tenets of Scientology.

Here we go:

Scientology proper (an oxymoron to end all oxymorons) is a curious mish-mash of Hinduism, Buddhism, and a number of Western philosophies, including Christianity.  

It asserts that 75 million years ago, a diabolical galactic warlord named Xenu was the leader of seventy-six planets in this part of the galaxy, which was way overpopulated.  To solve this problem, Xenu flew 13.5 trillion beings to Earth, dumped them into volcanoes around the globe, and vaporized them with bombs.  Thus, their radioactive souls (or “thetans”) were scattered like dust until they were captured in electronic traps set up around the atmosphere and implanted with a host of spurious ideas, among which were the concepts of God, Jesus Christ and organized religion in general.  Many of these false ideas attach themselves to human beings, where they remain to this day unless rooted out via “auditing."

French sociologist Regis Dericquebourg—an expert in comparative religions, describes Scientology’s belief system as one of “regressive utopia,” in which man seeks to return to a primordial state of bliss, through a rigorous process that involves lots of jumping through psychological hoops. 

And if the above is not bizarre enough, here is something even more bizarre.  As a scientologist, you do not even have access to this “truth” until you reach the level of O.T. (operating thetan) 3; a level which you have to be invited to.  It is at this stage that you are handed a manilla folder and given the secrets of the universe, which the initiated must read in a locked room.

And as Rolling Stone reporter Janet Reitman so aptly observes, this manilla folder “moment-of-truth” would be tantamount to Jesus telling his followers that He was the Son of God only after years and years of discipleship.  Or Buddha not telling his minions about the poison arrow or Nirvana.  Or Moses not telling the Israelites about the precepts of Yahweh after 40 years of wandering…instead making the longsuffering Israelites sweat it out and wait for the truth until he deemed them ready for it.

And what’s more, the process of enlightenment, also known as the “Bridge to Total Freedom,” actually drains one’s pocketbook.  Scientology charges for almost all of its religious services—auditing is generally purchased in 12.5 hour blocks, ranging from $750 to $9,000, depending on how high up you are on the food chain. 

And Scientology’s response to this?  Mike Rinder, one of the directors of Scientology’s International legal wing, tells Rolling Stone: “Do you want to know the real answer?  If we could offer everything for free, we would do it.”  Another official says “We don’t have 2,000 years of acquired wealth to fall back on”—an obvious dig at the Church.

When I asked Lucy the same monetary question, she was not quite as acerbic. Yet she confirmed for me that auditing charges were not cheap. At the Minneapolis center, auditing charges start at $200 for twelve sessions of professional auditing. The sessions are an hour long each, yet Lucy made a point to tell us that they would not stop in the middle of a session if they hit an intense “engram” that needed to be resolved. In other words, you get your money’s worth.

What is an “engram”????

Stay tuned for the answer (hint: it does not fit into a toaster), as well as the final wrap-up—and concluding blog—for this series on my adventures with Scientology. And believe me, it will be a humdinger!

Things I Learned While Watching John Mayer Perform

You can play the blues if you’re black and poor (i.e. Blind Lemon Jefferson), black and rich (B.B. King), or even white and poor (a young, coked-out Stevie Ray Vaughn)…yet if you’re white and flush with cash (i.e. John Mayer), it lacks a certain gravitas and just looks silly.

Please, John, stick with teenage pop ditties, that’s your forté.

I loved John Mayer’s rendition of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin” though. That’s worth the price of the new video, entitled “Where The Light Is: Live in Los Angeles.”

Also, there is minimal froggy-face action in this video, and that is a good thing;there is also the added bonus of Jessica Simpson's maltese puppy, Daisy, riding shotgun in Mayer's car while Mayer pontificates about the lumbering burden of superstardom and the weight of ten thousand girls on his hapless soul.

Check it out!