murrypurryfurry

So I headed up into the city today to catch the Castro St. Fair. I've never actually been to any pride or any other sort of gay event so I was rather excited but also a bit anxious. As it turned out the festivities were far more tame than I feared - yes there were some drag queens, yes there were some shirtless hairy guys, but everyone was having a grand old time, and the vast majority of attendees were short haired fit well dressed guys and girls flocking around mobile cafes and home mortgage refinancing booths set up for the occasion.

There was some nice music (some decent Zeppelin covers) and hell there was even BBQ (That's right James Dobson, fags Barbecue, imagine that). All in all it was a pleasant outing, nice weather lots of little booths and tents full of all sorts of wonderful stuff (picked up some B&W photograph prints of the city and a nice little hand carved buddah for my sister who's feeling down).

The thing that surprised me the most, however was the presence of a big booth with the words FREE STRESS TEST above it.



For those not in the know, "Free stress test" is the code word for "here be crazy brainwashed cultists", or more specifically Scientologists, which luckily we don't have much trouble with in Phoenix, but the bay area being what it is cultish crazyness is sort of run of the mill.

Now normally I'd be too cowardly to go up and harass them - hell where I'm staying in Mt. View there's a Scientology center not three blocks from me and I haven't bothered to go heckle them yet, but I found it particularly insulting that they should show up at a gay event being that part of their doctrine is that Dianetics will cure homosexuality and L. Ron Hubbard's own son was driven to suicide by his homophobic father. It's a bit like NARTH showing up and handing out lolly pops.

Naturally I felt obligated to make an ass of myself.

I approached the booth and as you can see above the representatives of the church there were dressed up all ha-ha goofy. One as a Mad scientist (a little too close to the truth) the other as some sort of golden-age sci-fi jetson type girl (pictured below) and even on their booth's sign they've got a picture of the typical grey alien head.
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Making things even more absurd they had a little 1$ "Bean Tom Cruise" game where you could throw 3 bean bags at a cardboard head of Tom "You don't know the history of psychology like I do, Matt" Cruise and knock his teeth out. The effect was completed when, uppon approaching the booth and being asked if I'd like a free stress test (and informing the cultist that I already know I'm stressed) She instructed me to be sure by waving my hand in front of a cute little alien action figure with Tom Cruise's head on it - and apparently motion sensitive the thing splits open and gives a little alien shriek.


(goodness how wacky these guys are, guess everything I heard about 'em was wrong!)

At first I wondered if these clowns were just there making fun of Scientology themselves, but after waving my hand in front of the toy I said that this was bad news because I already signed up for the Xenu mailing list at the booth up the street - Dr. Crazy with his Scientology cross pin frowned at me and asked if there really was one (there wasn't) and seemed to get a bit huffy and mumbled something to me about "those darn Scientology mockers".

Okay so clearly these guys were legitimately representing the church, however it seemed that their strategy was to take common perception of the church and take it to such ridiculous extremes that it seems like they're just having fun with what must certainly be absurd misunderstandings about the church. Pretty fucking arrogant if you ask me, but definitely a good distraction technique to disguise what it is they actually do.

By this point I can hardly believe these jokers, and I'm right at the front of the booth which has an unsettlingly large crowd around it, so I use my big boy voice and project, "So, this stress test isn't going to interfere with my anti-depressant medication is it?"

Mrs. Silver Shoulders tells me straight faced and similarly loud that "goodness, no in fact you won't even need your anti dipressants if you do this regularly!"

So then I again, quite a bit louder, "Oh good, well then in about how long do you think the science of Dianetics could cure me of my homosexuality?"

A hush falls around the crowd, Mrs. silver shoulders looks aghast, the mad Scientist looks up from some clip-board survey thing he's giving to another person, and I get the impression I'm about to be fair game. "Look it up yourselves, people, it's what they're here for" I say facing the crowd, and leave, unfortunately before getting a chance claim that I'd reached a clear state on my own and wanted to know if I could just start OT training right away (I want my super powers damn it).

The crowd seemed to close in as I left, and I watched most of them dissipate from the comfort of a booth with free tea and snacks down the road a few yards - satisfied with a bit of dickery adequately done.