Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt.religion.scientology.xenu Subject: Greetings from sunny Perth ... From: gerdw@cougar.vut.edu.au (David Gerard) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 08:02:53 GMT
... had a lovely holiday, met many a net.friend. apologies to those I missed (Rod Swift, stress@wantree) ... and fun with the clams.
I won't show every ace up my sleeve in this posting, but I had some good ol' down-home ARSCC fun in Perth last week.
David Visits The Church
Popped into the new Perth Org. The Squirrel has described it to you. I have photos and will develop and scan them at some point. It's in the basement of what was 'Wonderland For Toys' (I believe the Red Cross used to have an office under there at one stage?). Two doors, one marked 'Church of Scientology - Now Hiring!' and the other marked 'Dianetics Information Centre - Free Personality Testing!' with a Dianetics poster.
No big sign out the front, not even the funky sign they used to have (see http://suburbia.net/~fun/scn/orgs/ for a pic). I spent about half an hour walking around and around looking for the fucker. You cannot find the thing unless you know EXACTLY where it is, or walk right past it (as I eventually did).
While my camera operator was off looking through every record in the Dada Records vinyl section down the street (dug up some goodies too), I decided to pop in for a ... personality test.
I didn't have the Ted Mayett Cheat Sheet on hand, so I just used another handy formula: answer like Mr Spock, and use Total Logic. Whenever Total Logic failed me, I would try to answer as I would imagine LRH answering.
I did pretty damned well - got perfect scores on Certainty and something else good and LRH-ish, and high scores on all others except for happiness level (middling - Mr Spock's deep human emotions were always such a plot device, y'know) and 'comm level', which was well below the centre line - eep! guess what they immediately decided to try to sell me? Ah well.
When the test was done, I sat down in the usual reading area to read the usual materials. A pamphlet called Church of Scientology Community News which was peppered with typos and spelling errors, particularly in the article about the Literacy Crusade ... oops. The same Australian edition of Freedom (numbered Vol X No X) that was given away at the March demos, the one with the slander of Tony McClelland and Cyril Vosper. A pamphlet explaining why you should say no to drugs.
The radio was on 94.5 FM, a local FM-rock station which uses the fantastic slogan 'No Rap. No hard rock.' and was turned loud enough that I couldn't quite hear the Ron-bot selling frantically to his victim while I did the test.
A word about the victim who was already in there. She was a good example of Scientology working on people only insofar as they actually notice their minds for the first time EVER - which will be a productive thing - and then attribute any gains to Scientology itself rather than their own efforts. She was utterly BLOWN AWAY by the meagre thrill of a chat about Dianetics, to the point of going out right there and then to get $100 out of the bank to buy a course. Well, I decided. I was gonna be nice to the little turd, but that tears it. He's meat.
I didn't end up blowing my top at him. (I did make sure to write 'Xenu loves you!' on one of the pages of the question booklet.) After waiting far too long to have my test marked, I told the dude he had ten minutes. No problem, he said. He took me through the chart, ascertained that I lived in Melbourne (I gave a name and an address which are not mine, but which would work for redirection of mail) and proceeded to sell me on going right away into the Melbourne org. Cool.
He then handed me copies of a new trashy CoS promotional magazine, called International Scientology News (no dates on the cover, of course ... what was the HCOPL about never dating anything? someone got it handy?), stressing the articles about the new Internet sites. Hmm.
But the best bit was at the end. I asked about getting on a mailing list. So the dude hands me a form for six months' free membership in the International Association of Scientologists. I duly fill out the form (ignoring the proviso that I need to have purchased something for it to be valid - and that there is an Executive Directive specifically stating that any staffer who gives an invalid discount is personally liable for the cost ... poor sod, heh heh ... you better check just how many of these the dude has been handing out), fill it in with the name and address, try to duplicate the scrawl I had made in the 'Signature' part of the previous form, and put the card in my pocket.
And, you know what that means, don't you?
It means that I, the Reverend Doctor David Gerard, am now ...
... a CARD-CARRYING SCIENTOLOGIST!
Oh, happy day!
--
July 5, 1998, 7 AM. Saucers. End of the world. Your US$30 is your
trip ticket.
Reverend Doctor David Gerard, KoX, SP 4.04, kOh, RPG-to-be;
fun@suburbia.net
Prestige Elite(tm) Research Church of the
SubGenius
Card-carrying Scientologist. No, really. http://suburbia.net/~fun/scn/