{"id":681,"date":"2008-02-10T18:54:20","date_gmt":"2008-02-11T01:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/main\/2008\/02\/no-i-didnt-go"},"modified":"2013-02-23T05:03:34","modified_gmt":"2013-02-23T05:03:34","slug":"no-i-didnt-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/2008\/02\/10\/no-i-didnt-go\/","title":{"rendered":"No, I didn&#8217;t go."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As far as I know, there was a protest here in the Denver area, as well as maybe one in Boulder.  I don&#8217;t know about the Boulder one, but the Denver protest may&#8217;ve had sixty people.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder if that had anything to do with someone deciding they only wanted &#8216;anons&#8217; and not &#8216;internet fags who saw it on youtube&#8217;.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nPersonally, I haven&#8217;t seen their little youtube thing.  Through a series of [not so] serendipitous events, I began a Scientology reading binge about a week before the stupid Tom Cruise Video and the Denial of Service fiasco.<\/p>\n<p>Allow me to explain through the magic of vague minustime [ &#8211; time ]. It went something like this:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; 3 weeks:  Business as usual.<br \/>\n&#8211; 2 weeks:  I can&#8217;t get away from talk of Scientology.  Even if I put the entire chatroom on ignore, someone finds me through IM and asks me if I&#8217;ve heard about it.  Halfway through the week, I get seriously annoyed and finally go to <a HREF=\"http:\/\/xenu.net\">xenu.net<\/a>.  I figure I&#8217;ll watch that Southpark thing again, and be done with it.<br \/>\n&#8211; 1 week:  The magic and spiffiness of Scientology is that it forces so many people to turn to the internet to release their information.  Xenu.net has books.  WHOLE BOOKS!  I have found a new home.  After much rummaging through various metaphorical boxes, I settle <a HREF=\"http:\/\/xenu.net\/archive\/personal_story\/paulette_cooper\/\">here<\/a> and start reading.<br \/>\nThe Attack: I already know so much about Scientology that I decide the initial attack is just them being terribly confused by all the hits they&#8217;re getting, and deciding to blame &#8216;some anonymous party&#8217;, which, in turn, leads to Anon dropping in to gay up the place.<\/p>\n<p>I still don&#8217;t know if I was wrong about that.  I really don&#8217;t know that I care, either, because it sounds like the sort of thing they&#8217;d do &#8212; also, at this point, I have much more reading to do.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, I&#8217;ve been through <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.clambake.org\/archive\/books\/tsos\/sos.html\">The Scandal of Scientology<\/a>, <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.clambake.org\/archive\/books\/apobs\/\">A Piece of Blue Sky<\/a>, <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.clambake.org\/archive\/books\/bfm\/bfmconte.htm\">Bare-Faced Messiah &#8211; The True Story of L Ron Hubbard<\/a>, and am now working my way through the available parts of the potentially-longer-and-denser-than-Battlefield Earth Clearwater Hearing transcript [both <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.lermanet2.com\/82cwcommission\/\">here<\/a> and <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.xenu-directory.net\/documents\/cw1982\/cw_contents.htm\">here<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>In my wanderings, I ended up at <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.scientology-lies.com\/\">scientology-lies.com<\/a> through a rather old [nothing newer than the 90s] page that seemed to be nothing more than a collected list of reports of harassment from the newsgroup.<\/p>\n<p>Also, you can&#8217;t forget the ever-popular <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.whyaretheydead.net\/\">http:\/\/www.whyaretheydead.net\/<\/a> and <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.lisamcpherson.org\/\">http:\/\/www.lisamcpherson.org\/<\/a>, because <em>everyone<\/em> knows about Lisa.  And that boiled guy [there are pictures].<\/p>\n<p>I think that, once I&#8217;m done with the transcripts, I&#8217;ll be moving back to xenu.net.  There are still more free-to-read-online books there, and I do enjoy that.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, no.  I didn&#8217;t attend the protest, so there will be no pictures of it here. But I do suddenly feel that I know way more about Scientology than I do about some other religions.  Because of this, I feel qualified to have an opinion on the subject.<\/p>\n<p>Hubbard makes me look sane.  And kind.  And coherent.  And alive, since he&#8217;s really, most sincerely dead.<\/p>\n<p>Scientology is a potentially dangerous cult and a moneymaking scheme. The people involved aren&#8217;t always bad people, but&#8230;well, neither are people in other religions, until they blow up a Planned Parenthood clinic.  It&#8217;s kinda the same thing.  The crazies in Scientology probably would&#8217;ve joined the Army of God if they&#8217;d gotten there first [and, say, gotten the parents of this person, because they were probably raised in the cult].<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not actually interested in &#8216;destroying&#8217; Scientology &#8211; I know better than that.  You can&#8217;t destroy something that&#8217;s already been spread on the internet [like that Tom Cruise video].  I would like to see them lose their tax exempt status, though.  And maybe get labelled as <a HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vexatious_litigation\">vexatious litigants.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;ha!  Someone put <a HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Scientology_and_the_legal_system\">this<\/a> at the bottom of the Vexatious Litigation page.  I guess I&#8217;m not the only one&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Shit.  Why are the croutons always gone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As far as I know, there was a protest here in the Denver area, as well as maybe one in Boulder. I don&#8217;t know about the Boulder one, but the Denver protest may&#8217;ve had sixty people. I wonder if that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/2008\/02\/10\/no-i-didnt-go\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,17],"tags":[149],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ia","category-religion","tag-scientology"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3bMfN-aZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1829,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions\/1829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}