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?”

Comments

[Dave]

The pseudo conversation with the bust of L.Ron made my day....tell Joseph Smith you said hello :D

Ha!

[Will Banister]

Hey, if it makes your day then it makes my day too. Now I better go find a good attorney and put him or her on a provisional retainer.