I'm predjudiced against Scientologists.
I mean, I've just taken aboard all the unfair negative coverage from the media without giving them a chance. Maybe there really was a tyrant ruler Xenu who destroyed millions of souls inside volcanoes on Earth with Hydrogen Bombs......

Or maybe some things can and should be dismissed quickly without even bothering to dig beneath the surface. Like X-Factor.
( TheFinch is getting to grips with the complex plane on, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 13:59, 4 replies)

I have been privileged to experience one of the fabled e-meters.
It's a fairly simple skin galvanometer. The bloke who was carefully asking me questions and reading the meter's responses, testing to make sure that sorry, 'whether' I needed Dianetics in my life gave up when I looked him in the eye and started rapidly squeezing and relaxing my hands, making the needle swing wildly all over the place, and asked him "So what does this say about my personality?"

Unfortunately he had a response. My piss taking was a sign that I was a troubled individual who needed order in my life. This book will help show you how. It's only £14.99, on special because we want to help you.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 14:30, closed)

Scientologists
Disliking scientologists is not prejudice. It's a sign of normality.

I don't dislike them. I hate them with a vehemence that's difficult to fathom, even for myself, as I am - all evidence here to the contrary - a calm, cuddly and well-dispositioned kind of chap. I'm also almost 50, and pretty much don't give a fuck about anything but my family. Last summer, at a farmer's market in Boulder, CO, they had a tent/booth thing, at which one of the scum was attempting to sucker an innocent and naive young college lass with an e-meter.

I'm an electrical engineer by (lengthy) education. I stood behind the doofus schmientologist as he went through his spiel, alternately laughing out loud and correcting the errors he was stating as facts. He didn't like it. One of the goons asked me to move along. I explained that this was a public place, and I could stand just where I wanted, and that I intended to do just that.

He touched my arm as if to move me. I took a half-step towards him and suggested, very politely, that he take his hand off my arm as that was both assault and battery (Mrs. IHaveComeAmongThee is a lawyer, so I've been fully trained.) I may have suggested that he do it not now, but RIGHT NOW, less I felt I would have to defend myself. Jerk off went to get more goons and they started to harass me. I just kept my sun hat down over my eyes so they couldn't take pictures and started talking to myself about how it was all a bunch of mumbo jumbo, that L. (I do) Ron Hubbard was a liar, a thief, and a charlatan, and that the "religion" was the result of a bet with Heinlein.

I was being an arsehole. Frankly, if I prevented, or even delayed, one person from engaging with those thieving, lying, manipulative sacks of cultish excrement, I consider my hour there well-spent. I'm already looking forward to this summer's farmer's market...
(IHaveComeAmongThee__Twice Tissues on the left. Self-esteem on the right., Tue 6 Apr 2010, 18:15, closed)

Did they come round your house later?
With a film crew? Like this:

www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/may/13/broadcasting.bbc

Edit: The cunts.
( TheFinch is getting to grips with the complex plane on, Tue 6 Apr 2010, 22:55, closed)

They did not visit chez moi
That's one reason I wore my big floppy-brimmed sun hat down low, so they couldn't get photos of me. And I was extraordinarily careful making my way from the goon-baiting site to where I'd parked (it was a couple of hours and several bus rides later.)

Frankly, I find all religion kinda suspect. But I'm prepared to leave the theists alone, as long as they leave me alone too. Dawkins would be pissed off if he knew. It's the fundamentalists (ever read Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven?), the "new" religions ("Oh, I was wandering about and God gave me a few new books of the bible he forgot to have written down earlier" - think LDS et al), and the kooky schmientologists that make me see red, mostly because they prey on the weak-willed and feeble-minded.

You're right. They're cunts.
(IHaveComeAmongThee__Twice Tissues on the left. Self-esteem on the right., Wed 7 Apr 2010, 4:55, closed)