How To Become a Scientologist

I'm becoming a Scientologist.

Scientology is one of those words that must be pronounced with the sound of laughter behind it, otherwise it has been mispronounced.

Last night, while moping around Harvard Sq., I stopped off and took a "Free" outdoor stress test.

Fun Fact: Never take a stress test when you're depressed. You will end up buying every product they're offering.

"You're right, I do feel a bit depressed. I could most definitely use that self-help guide. AND there's a supplemental CD for my listening pleasure? Sign me up."

"You have group meetings and costly psychological visits? How did you know that's what I needed?"

The stress test works as follows: You sit outside the Harvard Sq. T station, located in between two lanes of oncoming traffic. Meanwhile, heroin and coke addicts stumble by, mumbling to no one in particular, with an occasional scream for good measure. If you're not stressed from just sitting there, then you probably don't have a pulse.

While remaining seated, you hold two hollow metal rods in your palms. Each is wired into a Fisher price looking machine that you know is complete bullshit. While you ponder how long you have to sit there to remain polite, the guy asks you to tell him things you find stressful. Then the machine moves.

He says, "what's stressing you these days?"

And I say, "girls."

Then the meter arrow moves and he says, "see that? It moved. It means girls stress you out."

Yea, that's what I just told you. Thanks for analyzing and repeating the words coming from my mouth.

Then he asks me to get into my emotions and how I feel about girls. And I say, "Frustration, depression."

And the meter moves again. And he says, "see depression seems to be stressing you out."

"What kind of research did you have to do to discover that? The magic of scientology."

"Don't tell me stress is stressing me out. That's too much to handle. It stresses me out thinking about the extra stress that stress buildup ensues, caking onto my stressful stress. I have to buy another DVD to help it back down.

The next thing he said was "we have a book here on Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard. It's good for people who have stress in their lives. You should get one." So it's good for everyone.

And I say, "that is the stupidest argument for a book. Everyone gets stressed out...of course I'll buy the book. What else do you have? A DVD? I'd love one, unless you have the box set, then I'm sold."

The book is 1,000 pages. I can't read more than 10 pages at a time, but for some reason I thought I could read a 1,000 page book. It looks more like a science fiction novel then a fact based self-help guide. There's a volcano erupting on the front and it says, "Bestseller."

They kept selling it as "This is sold in 50 languages and 200 countries." Like I'm gonna be like "Ok now I'll buy it. If people speaking Swahili are reading this then it must be good. I took French for 7 years and learned nothing, but the fact that there's a possibility of me reading this in French is very moving."

They defined several words in the footnotes to help you feel retarded. Some of the definitions were suspect:

Sir Isaac Newton was defined as an "idiot head."

Point is, get a book on Dianetics.