Yet again, the Scientologists invaded Port Authority to offer "free stress tests" and had plenty of suckers sitting down, not realizing that this way lies Tom Cruise. They have no right to do this within the public transit system. What's more annoying is that the cops reserve the right to stop you and search your backpack (which I've never seen happen, actually), and yet a large "religious" group can waltz in with folding tables, chairs and signage and set up shop for commercial purposes. Give me a break, Bloomberg.
I reported them to an employee, who said she had no power to remove them, and that I had to file a complaint. "Fine," I said. "How about calling your boss at least?" Nope, even that was beyond the scope of her job. Comforting.
This is why I hate Scientologists: They are 100% cultists, even if some happen to be famous and pretty. This is why I was sickened to hear that Will Smith is now in the fold after aggressive courting from Tom Cruise. How anyone could get sucked into a cult is beyond me. It's frightening, but in a way it's comforting—if I understood the attraction perhaps I'd be more susceptible to these intellectual terrorists.
From National Enquirer (November 5, 2007), another reason why the superreligious bother the hell out of me—entitlement. There is a peculiar kind of self-absorption in thinking that a presumed supreme being has granted you a wish (via prayer), as opposed to simply being grateful for the gifts that we all have access to thanks to this presumed supreme being (food, water, shelter, family, love). Rick Schroder's son was terribly injured in a dirt-bike accident, and now that he is healing, the Rickster says, "My wife and I prayed to God for a miracle, and He granted us one. We're told Holden is going to be all right. For that, we will be eternally grateful to Him."
So if Holden had not been all right, God would've been off the Xmas card list?
And what about the fact that he was hurt in the first place? And what about all the people whose prayers are not answered, including some whose children don't have expensive dirt bikes to wipe out on? I'm irreligious, but I think if you define your relationship with God by what He can do for you, you're missing the point. And if you're willing to believe God is listening to your meager prayers when there are so many absolutely destroyed human beings out there whose devoted prayers are going unanswered, how can you not feel special...better...than the rest? Take a flying leap.
But that brings me back to what I've never liked about religion—if you truly believe in a faith, you're encouraged explicitly and implicitly to feel that those who are non-believers are either evil or stupid and are deserving of any negative things that happen to them.
Cut to Glenn Beck coolly assessing the latest wildfires as comeuppance for "America-hating."
I'm glad Rickster Jr.'s okay, but let's not call full recovery from crashing your dirt-bike into a parked delivery truck a miracle.
There's a difference between being totally stupid and totally wrong.
If you believe Larry Craig does not have sex with men, you're totally stupid. If you believe he shouldn't be drummed out of the Senate for soliciting sex in a men's room and pleading guilty to a lesser charge, you're just totally wrong.
When it comes to religion, as an atheist, I feel most people are totally wrong. That's because most people believe in some kind of very basic notion of a higher power. But some of those people are also totally stupid. Like Scientologists. It's actually an insult to Christianity to include Scientology in the same breath as a supposed faith and I don't think too highly of Christianity to begin with. This is set off by a questionnaire I received in the mail today, reproduced here:
If you seriously believe you could benefit from answering 200 random, often repetitive, often badly worded ("Do you make thoughtless remarks or accusations which later you regret?") questions, you must be coming off years of drug abuse, years of sexual confusion, years of bad luck or years of living dangerously. If anything, answering definitely yes or mostly yes (+) to "Would you prefer to be in a position where you did not have the responsibilities of making decisions?" would be more helpful to the Scientologists in identifying you as just the kinda believer they're looking for.
But as "stupid" as Scientology is, are more established religions much "smart"-ter? Sometimes I think I (we?) are more accepting of faiths that are old simply because they're so intrinsically a part of the fabric of life when we arrive that they can not seem out of the ordinary. But every once in a while, something happens that makes me look at Christianity anew and think, "This is fucking nuts." Like the denial of evolution, the cherry-picking of abominations as outlined in the Bible (homosexuality is on the same level with eating shrimp, yet we don't hear about the shrimp issue too often) or focusing on some of the Good Book's least believable passages.
I will be your Father figure.
Today, the WTF? moment regarding Christianity is this supposed sighting of Pope John Paul II's waving image in a bonfire. If you take pictures of a bonfire for long enough, I guarantee you'll find images of the Golden Girls eating cheesecake and Anjelica Huston breaking up with Jack Nicholson. This story makes me look at those faithful Catholics (who do not necessarily represent all Catholics) and think of them as barely human—you'd almost have to be dumb as a dog to look for messages from a higher power in photography. This led me to Our Lady's Shrine in Bayside, Queens, where an organization exists to document spooky photos that show rosary patterns and other apparitions. These photos are deemed to be miraculous despite looking like they come from bad film, a shaky shooter, imperfections in the photography process or trickery. (Even the Church shrugs off the site's deceased inspiration, "visionary" housewife Veronica Lueken.)
Mary apparently thinks highly of Queens.
It's willful stupidity. If you're willing to see things where they do not exist and if you're willing to chalk them up to a higher power, it irks me to realize that you might be out there driving a car, let alone voting.
It's a question of faith, all right—and it makes me lose faith in my fellow man.
Back to Scientology: "Does life seem rather vague and unreal to you?" I'd give that a big "+."
National Enquirer (October 15, 2007) details the newest Clay Aiken scandal—he's set to perform at the Central Christian Church in Wichita, but its congregation finds the idea repulsive since even they know he's gay. I'm glad this kind of thing is happening—it serves to underscore why outing him makes sense. He's secretly gay and denies it in order to continue a public facade of being a conservative Christian. Anyone who is closeted is hurting himself, anyone who's closeted and kissing religious ass is hurting the rest of us. As long as people are allowed to think homosexuality is rare, homophobia thrives. If Clay Aiken doesn't have the integrity to out himself—or to at least refuse to perform at a church that would not have a gay person sing for its members—he should not expect others to respect his wishes for privacy.
Congregation seeks alternate boy.
This reminds me of a great piece in The Advocate (October 9, 2007), the first issue of its redesign under editor Anne Stockwell (I love her!). "Shooting The Messenger" by Christopher Lisotta looks at the explosive reactions to the post-mortem outing of Merv Griffin by The Hollywood Reporter and the post-tearoom outing of Larry Craig by...well, everyone.
"Merv Griffin was gay." Very, very gay.
The money quote is by Ray Richmond (who wrote the Griffin story):
"There's a fear that Middle America is not going to be accepting, and maybe they are right. But maybe Middle America needs to be more accepting."
That's the kind of Idol America needs.
(By the way, I love the look of The Advocate. It's as tastefully "refreshed" as its cover girl Hillary Clinton's face. The back cover is a matching ad featuring Tom Brady. When did I miss his canonization as the American Beckham to the gays??? He's everywhere.)
I was walking in Times Square tonight and was overwhelmed by the competing forces of light and dark!
In this corner, we have the Cedar Springs Amish-Mennonite Youth Choir singing their hearts out and (forgive me, Lord) disseminating free CDs entitled What A Friend We Have In Jesus stuffed with two religious tracts. One tract, "Eternity," likens eternal damnation to being stuck in traffic forever...but literally.
With friends like Jesus, who needs spiritual executioners?
The other, "This Was Your Life!," presents a cartoon showing a poor heathen who dies and is shocked—shocked!—to find he's being dragged to Judgment. "I simply refuse to believe this is happening to me!" he carps. But it is. In one panel, all of his sins are revealed, including obviously bad stuff of which we're all guilty, such as "DECEIT," "PRIDE," "WHOREMONGER" and "LIES." But it also includes some strange ones that must be Amish-centric, like "WHISPERER" and "BACKBITER."
Damnation animation.
And then there is "UNMERCIFUL," which is interesting because the next page shows God—who we're supposed to be emulating—casting the dead guy into "the lake of fire."
Oh, well, they sure sounded pretty. The hot young dude handing out the CDs looked scared to death, like the other side of 42nd might be the near shore of the lake of fire. He was standing agog, watching cops ticketing a cyclist.
So many mentors, so little time.
Twenty feet away, you could see a handful of strapping, smoking-hot he-men of color stripped to the waist performing push-ups and posing with young ladies whose eyes had gone glassy with "WHOREMONGERING." Turns out they were hustling a new calendar called City Gym Boys 2008—it's apparently some kind of inner-city mentoring thing, and it crossed my mind how much fun it would be to let them line up and mentor me one after another.
Did I choose the light or the dark? Which was which? I chose neither; I observed both and continued on, toward the lake of fire.
I absolutely hate it when people perform for me on the subway. It's in-your-face enough to have even the most liberal New Yorker ready to throw a match on the First Amendment rather than a few coins into an aggressively outthrust hat. Just as annoying is when people perform on the subway system but not actually on the train, often at a major hub—I am no longer impressed by their trapped-in-the-’80s acrobatics, original rap, and not-so-original mimicry of heard-too-often standards. It's especially hard to admire them when you can't even get around them thanks to the crowd of patronizing tourists and locals who all but pat the darlings on the head for clogging the system even more than it already was. Dance if you must, but don't dance between me and a stairway leading to where I need to go.
But fuck if I should have to put up with the legendarily opportunistic Church Of Scientology setting up shop inside the New York transit system, as they did this weekend at Port Authority. They often have their tables with "free stress tests!" set up along 42nd Street—I hate street vendors, too, since 90% of them are shady guys carrying giant blankets full of blatantly bootlegged and/or stolen purses that all the law-and-order-Republican tourists have no problem buying. With the Scientologists, their stress-test tables attract a steady flow of clueless types who have no idea the test is a part of Scientology. I always want to walk by and say, "Pssst! Hey, do you realize this is Scientology? Do you know they believe in space aliens, not Jesus?" I bring Jesus into it not because he's my explanation of choice, but because I've never once seen a person sit down for that test who did not look like a wayward Christian soldier.
Shouldn't the Church Of Scientology, if it's so (you should pardon the expression) hell-bent on being considered a church, be banned from working within the New York transit system? And shouldn't any non-religious/non-cult (take yer pick) business also be banned from hucksterism on public property?
What's next? Begging for my soul while holding the door for me at my cash station? As much as I despise Scientology, I have to say I would be just as pissed off if this were Baptists or McDonald's. What does it say about our transit system that they would allow an entity to set up shop like that at the Port Authority? Very comforting. Bring back the obnoxious singers.
