I think I mighta said this before, but allow me to reiterate on myself: I’m kinda disturbed by Scientologists. I’m not trying to make sport of anybody’s spiritual or, urm, scientological beliefs about life and shit, especially since I embrace all Belief Systems so’s I don’t get caught with my pants down when/if/after it all ends/begins/is revealed/nothing happens, OK? Basically, I think Scientologists are doing pretty good for themselves, and I don’t wanna do anything like make sacri-scientoligeous cartoons mocking their Great Leaders or otherwise go outta my way to piss any of ’em off, unless I find out they’re trying to remote-control my brain or something, because then it’s on. Seriously, do not attempt to remote-control my brain.

Anyway, people need to lighten up on all this Tom Cruise jazz, you know? Sure, maybe he’s a weirdo and a Scientologist, but c’mon, he’s From Hollywood, you know? Plus he’s got a movie coming out and stuff, the new Mission: Impossible III. Lotsa people have jobs because of him, so he’s, like, good for the economy or something. All I see is Tom Cruise making stacks of loot for his own self and errbody around him, even that guy Philip Seymour Hoffman, or Seymour Philip Hoffman, who got an Academy Award and everything for his performance in the Major Motion Picture Capote, right? Sure, he’s all classy with his Oscar, and now he’s gonna be raking in the serious ka-ching via the upcoming box-office blockbuster Mission: Impossible III courtesy Tom Cruise, right? You ever hear any other Hollywood-types saying bad stuff about Tom Cruise?

But still there’s all these professional and amateur Haters who are steady trying to run him down every chance they get, all assassinating on his character. Like over in Britain or Australia or someplace like that they printed this thing about how Tom Cruise, star of the new Mission: Impossible III film, said he was gonna eat his new baby’s afterbirth, and it’s like, c’mon. I think it’s bullshit, but only because it’s not weird enough; there’s lotsa boring ordinary non-Hollywood people who’d eat a baby placenta. If they got him saying he was gonna eat his baby, now that’d be some news.

But anyway, for me it’s just a coincidence that Tom Cruise, star and producer of Mission: Impossible (the Third), which opens in a Theater Near You on May 5, 2006, is one of these Scientologists. But look, Life is all about Learning and putting aside Preconceived Notions, so let’s all of us for a minute put aside our Personal Non-Beliefs and pretend Scientologistismarianism is a Real tax-deductible Religion and see if they do anything Bad other than take a lotta money at the collection plate or Multi-Dimensional Value-Essence Transmitter or whatever they use to get all these Hollywood actors to donate to programs for self-actualization or stuff like that.

So in the Spirit of Learning Not to Be Creeped Out by Scientologists, I went to the www.scientology.org web site to take their “Personality Test,” and since there isn’t a Scientology Hut or whatever around here, they had a list of places I could go to get my results analyzed, but they also had an option marked none of the above are close enough, which I figured was part of the test, like, “I’m too lazy and unmotivated to find out the results of my Scientological personality test,” right? Anyway, there were like 200 fucking questions! Jesus H. Hubbard, man, you gotta be dedicated to find out if you qualify for some Scientology:

Do you browse through railway timetables, directories, or dictionaries just for pleasure? Is your voice monotonous, rather than varied in pitch? Does “external noise” rarely interfere with your concentration? Are you always collecting things which “might be useful”? Do you bite your fingernails or chew the end of your pencil? Do you ever get a single thought which hangs around for days? Do you throw things away only to discover that you need them later? Are you sometimes convinced of the correctness of your opinions about a subject even though you are not an expert?

I think I did pretty good on my test. I mean, the little graph that came out with my results was kinda tough to figure out; there were all these categories named, like, stable, aggressive, happy, nervous, depressed, lack of accord, comm level, and on and on, and the only place where my test looked a li’l bit negatory was this thing called critical, where the stock-market graph went into the attention desirable zone, but I figure I’ll just work on that myself for a while and then take another test in a coupla years. So in the meantime, I’m not afraid of Scientologists, because I took the test and nobody showed up at my house to take me to a compound or anything, yet.

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