Picket Report, 21 July, 2000
Signs:
Scientology, $360,000 Space Alien Cult.

Scientology Says You're Covered With Dead Space Cooties!!!

Flyers: Xenu, scientology's Secret Space-Alien

Flyers distributed: 22

Fantastic New Discovery! The Stealth Picket

I've been toying with the idea of a stealth picket for a while now.

Yesterday, Shydavid and I took the idea for a test drive.

Every Friday downtown, there's a little Happy Hour street fest, with a live band and a beer garden. It does draw in some folks, and there's heavy summertime traffic as well.

Shydavid came over in the afternoon. By the time he arrived, I had printed out a copy of Roland's Xenu flyer and text for our signs. One sign said, "Scientology, $360,000 Space Alien Cult." The other said, "Scientology Says You're Covered With Dead Space Cooties!!!"

Clad in cunningly matched "Scientology Kills' T-shirts, we first went to Kinko's and ran off 50 copies of the Xenu flyer. The color graphic on the flier did not print out on my machine, so I replaced it with a nice alien clipart from one of my CDs. It printed out nicely!

We stopped by to pick up our signs, and hit the street with great stealth. We skirted the beer garden, which was surrounded by chain link fencing and sparsely populated, and settled in the patio outside at the Blarney Stone. We arranged our signs for optimum viewing by passersby, and I went in to order us a couple o' Guinness while David started folding flyers.

As it was a stealth picket, we minded our biz, but it wasn't long before we got our first customers, a couple from Washington State who told us of their visit to the Hubbard Life Museum in Los Angeles. We corrected the inaccuracies depicted there about Hubbard's fallacious biography for them, and gave them a flyer. Suddenly, the woman asked my name.

"Barb," I replied.

"Do you know a girl named Brynn?" she asked. I allowed that I did not.

"She came down to San Diego last year. She stayed in IB, do you know Michelle?"

Turns out, I do indeed know Michelle, she's a friend whom I've known for many years.

"I just had a feeling you were THAT Barb," she said. "Michelle told us about you."

I have prevailed at several of Michelle's parties, regaling the revelers with tales Scientological! Evidently the tales have spread all the way up the coast! Good!

Another passerby liked my space cootie sign so much, he asked to take a picture of it. We gave out a few flyers at the Blarney Stone before casting off to troll other waters at the patio of Patrick's II. We had a small problem there, as Mario, the bartender, has been inoculated by yours truly and didn't want our signs facing the street. Minor footbullet for our side, but he didn't ask us to remove our shirts. More passersby picked up on the T-shirts, and we gave out more flyers. One guy said, "Scientology! They suck!" Turns out he lives across the street from the org! He took a flyer, perhaps he'll share it with his neighbors! The signs were irrelevant. We stayed for one beer and moved on.

Several people stopped to talk to us on the street. A German couple commented on the signs, but refused flyers as they already knew about the cult. A surprising number of people turned down flyers because they already had been inoculated by television programs featuring the Happy Fun Kult. Good! From Israel to Germany, the mask of Scientology is slipping fast.

We proceeded to Sanban, a Japanese sushi joint, for snackulation. (only 3 blocks from the org!) There was a sign holder with no sign in it, so David gave it the space alien cult sign to hold. The Sanban staff didn't mind, in fact, I gave a couple of them flyers. Our signs got the attention of a group from the ComiCon convention, who are online and knew a great deal about Scientology already. We had a nice discussion with them about a wide range of cult behavior and actions; it was nice to see that the efforts of critics who post web pages are being appreciated by the public.

On the way back to my place, I noted how amusing it was, walking through the crowds on the sidewalk. You could hear murmurings in our wake containing the word Scientology! It's amazing how many people commented on our effort to educate the public, how many already knew about the cult, and how many people mistook us for Scientologists despite the 'Kills' T-shirts!

Andreas, how about a T-Shirt that says, "I am NOT a Scientologist!"

It sure beats picketing Gold Base, although we missed the pleasure of Keith and Ida's company, and Ida's superb hospitality! Had a few beers, some good conversations, no Scientologists to deal with, and gave out 22 flyers, possibly a record for a San Diego picket.

The Stealth Picket concept does work very well. When not in official 'picket mode,' people are very inclined to approach with questions and comments. The businesses don't seem too inclined to give you the boot if you're a paying customer, and we didn't shill from the patios; like the spider we spun our web silently and waited for our prey to come to us.

Unlike spiders, or Scientologists for that matter, we had no intention of sucking the raw meat dry, but rather, drying up the raw meat so the orgs will starve to death.

--
barb
"Every week, every month, every year, every decade and now every century, Scientology does weird and stupid things to damage its own reputation." - Steve Zadarnowski http://www.xenu.net
http://www.xenutv.com (see live Scientologists in their natural state!)

Fantastic New Discovery! The Stealth Picket, et tu David.

I wanted to see Barb, and perhaps down a few pints of demon alcohol ("You're drunk aren't you?!" -- Dan Murnen) at the local pub, so I wandered from my new abode and down the street and knocked upon her towering domicile. She buzzed me in.

I had come to ENTURBULATE and to EDUCATE. Enturbulate any and all Scientologists out walking among the raw meat (unlikely), and to educate the raw meat to STAY raw meat (much, much, much more likely). The few pints of bitters and the opium smoking (oops! Barb, was that a secret?!) were just icing on the cookies.

Barb printed out a sign: "Scientology $360,000 Space Alien Cult" and using Duct Tape Tech(tm)(r)(c) we managed to make it stick to the slightly damp cardboard I brought. Stir in one balsa wood stick (Minton Tech) from Keith's unlimited supply, and tah dah!

A Sign Is Born! It looked good; it looked powerful; it looked ready for anything; it looked---- enturbolatious!

First stop: Kinkos, right down the block from the brain washing center. We made 50 copies of the Xenu Flyer (modified by Barb with a line drawing of Xenu, which copied much better), and left the original to help enturb-ucate (Dictionary def: "Contraction of 'Enturbulate' and 'educate'") on the table next to the copy machine.

Second stop: The Blarney Stone! Barb asked me what I wanted to drink, but I had no idea. I (cough) never go to bars and I (cough) never drink alcohol. She commanded me to drink Guinness and LIKE IT OR ELSE, so I did. Hey, that's good stuff!

One need never eat real food again, if one only drinks that dark, sinister brew. It's like liquid bread (er, which it is).

It took me a full three minutes to get my sign positioned just right: facing the foot traffic three feet away from the pub's wee patio enclosure--- close enough that it could not possibly be missed by even the most myopic of wogs.

I tried to bum Barb's last cigarette off of her, but she would not give it to me (after all I've done for her!). But since I do not smoke, and Ken Hoden was not around to give her smokes, she still refused.

Passed out five or six flyers (quaffing cool drinks with one hand, passing out flyers with the other, while sitting on our whale-sized asses in the shade) to folks who walked up, saw the signs, and wanted to know more about Xenu. This is =THE= way to picket, folks! (Meanwhile, Keith Henson was in 105 Degree F. heat at Gold Base, marching up and down the blazing hot asphalt highway, under the relentless, killing sun, dogged by two evil thugs. Hardly seems fair, eh what?)

One waiter at The Blarney Stone wanted us to leave. "Why, sure! We're going any minute now! (Pssst! Hey David: go get us another round!)" --- Barb. The signs seemed to be enturbulating him more than they were educating him: I suspect he did not want crime syndicate goons to come along and harass their customers.

We drank The Blarney Stone dry, so we packed up our signs, flyers, and meat bodies and strolled off to the next pub--- signs out where folks would have to look at them just before leaping out of the way to avoid being smacked in the face by them. We heard lots of nearly sub-vocal talk about "Scientology" this and "Scientology" that as we passed people. I kept telling people we were "Anti! Anti! -NOT- pro! ANTI DAMN IT!" which made folks MUCH more friendly and approachable.

On my estimate, of the three or four dozen folks we talked to, only one was negative about our message--- that one person called -US- "crazy." We assume he thought we were supporting Scientology and not protesting their crimes / abuses.

It's amazing how saying "I'm -NOT- a Scientologist!" seems to make people gush with kindness and warmth and friendliness.

It's almost as if Scientology had a bad reputation around here.

We got to the second pub, leaving a trail of flyers in people's hands, and found us stools outside and amongst the foot traffic.

We parked our whale-sized butts and got another pint or two to kill our parched throats (hell, it was like an entire THREE BLOCKS to walk! Minton, I want hazard pay!). The bloke there was adamant about us facing our picket signs inward to where potential customers (and actual clams) would not see the words.

But a wee gust of wind kept turning the sign's face towards the foot traffic, try as we might to prevent that. We are just, like, so (cough) sorry this happened....

We passed out more Xenu flyers. Received many stories about how folks had to deal with "that crazy bunch of lunatics." One guy did some sandblasting from the crime syndicate, and he said that he was astonished at how insane the clams were. He ran away before we could ask him if he was paid in "services" instead of money.

It was dinner time--- hot Saki soon followed the Guinness down our once-again-newly-parched throats. At the Japanese restaurant we went to, a handy sign base was on the sidewalk just waiting for a sign to be suck in it! They must have known we were coming. Lots of folks saw the sign and gave us thumbs-up and cheers and other guttural utterances of approval. We asked one group of folks if they wanted flyers about Xenu, and one of the guys in the group said "Ah, Xenu? Body thetans? Volcanoes?

Murdered space aliens? I know all about that!" with a laugh.

That was cool--- Scientology (OTIII) REALLY =IS= expanding!

All good things must end, alas. It was time to stagger back home, signs clutched in our now-uncertain, un-steady hands. Barb even almost--- ALMOST!--- started to sing a Kenny Rodger's song but caught herself just after the "You gotta know when to hold 'em.... <HAULT!HARDSTOP!PARITY-ERROR!>" part. She commanded me to never ever ever mention it, and swore me to secrecy unto the grave that she had almost sung a Country Western song. I swore I'd not put it in this K/R. Which I didn't: one of my BT clusters did.

We got home safely. The alcohol seemed to have congregated in our whale-sized asses instead of the brain--- thank Goddess for large favors. All in all, it was a damn fine "protest / picket." My assessment is that people already know, or at least they believe they know, about Scientology and that they avoid it like a vampire avoids sunlight and garlic. This is why I think Kristi Watcher's "It's worse than you think!" is good tech: people may believe they know just how bad the Scientology abuses are, but not actually know to where they could pass on their information responsibly. Folks seem to already have been inoculated against joining Scientology:

the next step is to expose their front organizations!

This is true.
ShyDavid

Go Back