My riding buddy from the bay area keeps crossing paths with Scientology.

He has nothing whatsoever to do with Scientology, but for some reason, it keeps intruding into his life! It's a strange history, here are some accounts.

1. His roomate of a few years ago was a struggling artist who discovered Scientology and joined staph, err, staff. Not too long after, he decided to try out what he learned on his housemate. He came barging into the house one day to confront my friend with his new tool, Tone 40.

Loudly, he informed my friend that, from now on, my friend was going to pay his rent for him, so he could put all his efforts into scientology training. It was as if he'd memorized a script, my friend recalls. He launched into it and ran it. Part of his argument was this; if my friend was really his friend, he'd be happy to pay the rent, that's what friends do. He went on in this vein, until my friend had heard enough.

"Hey," sez he in Tone Woggie, "If you don't pay the rent yourself, you are welcome to leave and go live in your Volkswagen van!" End of discussion. The new scieno moved out. Later, he must've gotten a clue, probably because Tone 40 "works every time" and didn't in this case, at any rate, the guy only stayed in the cult a year before blowing.

My friend got a sense that Scientology is a bit screwy and makes its followers screwy as well. Which leads to the next encounter...

2. A female friend of his was excited about signing up for an initial course at the org, and told him about it. His response was to tell her that she should get her money back immediately, that scientology is not something she wanted to get involved with! She agreed to go back to the org and get a refund. My friend told her not to go alone, so she took her mother with her. She and her mom were escorted to a room to wait for the paperwork to be completed. Two women, one chair in the room. And surprise! The door was locked behind them. During the time they spent in the locked room, people would periodically enter the room, ignore the women, and exit without speaking to them. At one point, a pair of clams entered the room, sat down, and had a picnic, all the while ignoring them! After three hours of this, the two managed to shove their way out the door, which was blocked by some scientologists attempting to enter.

After threatening the girl at the desk with police action for falsly imprisoning them, and legal action for the refund, they finally got their check back!

Following a motorcycle accident, he was sent to Doc Wong, a motorcycling chiropractor who also happens to be a scientologist. Wong put my friend on the cult's mailing list, and the junk mail seems to follow him wherever he moves. He saves it up for me and brings it down when he visits.

During one of these visits, I was showing him ARS and xenu.net. There was a post from one of the critics from Europe who had been in the bay area visiting his girlfriend. The day after (?) he left for home, the clams showed up at the girlfriend's house with picket signs. I clicked on the link to the picture of the picketer, and my friend said, "That's my chiropractor!" Sure enough, good old Doc Wong was caught on film, sign in hand, outside her house. I posted about that at the time, mentioning that Doc Wong's website had a link to his scieno spam page.

A day later, the link was gone. Is the good "doctor" ashamed of his scientology association?

Present time:

My friend recently moved to a new house with new roomates. He noticed a relentless stream of scientology literature being sent to the house.

Guess what! His new roomate's sister and daughter are in the cult! As such, the roomate is a target for scientology propaganda. As a relative, they probably think that sooner or later he'll come around.

No matter where he goes, my friend always seems to be ankle-deep in clam tomfoolery and jiggery-pokery!

He isn't an active critic. He isn't on line. He don't picket. He will, however, talk your ear off for an hour if you even suggest an interest in joining the cult, and that's the best thing we all can do, inform and educate. I <snicker> have to wonder. What did my friend do to pull this in?

--
Barb
Chaplain, ARSCC
http://members.home.net/bwarr1/index.htm
"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

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