Auditor's Day, 17th September 2005

Your friendly local rogue thetan has been most remiss (and quiet!) over the lack of reports for quite some time; the denizens of ARSCC UK [wdne] have been sequestered deep within the bowels of Xenu's Secret Lair - with forays out to conduct Sekrit meetings with allies and cohorts. (We can neither confirm nor deny that members of ARSCC have been seen in the company of a certain Invisible Pink unicorn, but rumours of an alliance with the Flying Spaghetti monster are entirely unfounded. We think. Though with many of our members being also members and ministers in the Church of the Sub-Genius, one can never tell.)

Anyway, on a gloriously sunny Autumn afternoon in September the faithful troops gathered once more at Xenu's Secret Lair to launch another entheta sortie against the opposition. The occasion: Auditor's Day, an annual Scientology event, held this year on the 17th September. We thought we'd pop along to help the Scientologists celebrate, in our own inimitable entirely imitable fashion! Our Glorious Leader Xenu did not join us as he was having a little private clambake to celebrate in his own small way.

Your intrepid reporter started by photographing the demonstration. This one was remarkably different to the last two demos by virtue of the lack of a police presence. This seemed to enturbulate the clams quite a bit.

The only leaflets we had were the "Thriving Cult of Greed and Power" ones, with text taken from the Times article of the same name which the Scientologists contended originally in court on publication - and lost. The running patter on the Xenu boom box about El Ron writing the OT levels on "pinks and greys" (amphetamines) and David Miscavige needing a few more bob to water his private golf course went down well though.

After a while, the clams decided that they'd get their own photographer out - not the usual sour-faced OSA woman with her little shiny Canon digital, but a large man with a proper SLR. So I duly photographed him. We seemed to have some new staffers out front this time, too; an older fellow with a jocular manner was being very enthusiastic about pouncing on people (who inevitably would swerve away from him, right towards our own friendly Antipodean Blond who presented them with one of our own leaflets with a smile).

There was a photo-op for yours truly, posing in front of the Scientology sign with a can of Pret-a-Manger "Liquid Psychiatry" in one hand and a strip of lithium tablets in the other. The ThinkGeek "I'm Blogging This" t-shirt went down a storm too. (Next demo the props will be a copy of the DSM-IV-TR and my "I Read Your Email" t-shirt.)

One of our new demonstrators, a chap from a.r.s., popped across the road at one point to be chased by a girl from the Org who was shortly doing much better than he was at leafletting. When he came back across to get some more leaflets however, he was hotly pursued by about 5 members of the public who each requested a leaflet then went back and surrounded her with a barrage of questions. Shortly afterwards she fled back across the road and into the Org, and didn't emerge again for another half an hour - after which she stuck firmly in front of the Org. Another clam successfully enturbulated - and by members of the public, no less! Perhaps she ought to redo the Comms course. Or perhaps that dratted beingness was causing an ARC break? ;-)

Three police officers eventually turned up looking bored, and after a while of having their ears bent by Sourface they wandered back across to us, and basically told us that as long as we stuck to our side of the pavement and the sound from the Boom Box didn't get any louder, we could carry on as we wished. They'd already told the clams to keep off our toes - and if they didn't like what we were saying, they should stay inside and only leave to get a sandwich or something, but any direct contact face-to-face - on either side - was a no-on. (You can just imagine how that must have gone down with the clams!) Then they strolled off after we thanked them politely and assured them the demo would be a peaceful one.

The clams resorted to filming us after this - with a video camera set up well back inside the org. We gave it a little wave anyway. They tried to drown out the Boom Box with music playing far louder (and creating far more of a breech of the peace than we had) than our patter; but the excessively loud music was having the drawback effect of driving people away from the Org and ensuring passersby may not have been able to hear us, but they also couldn't hear the scientologists either!

All in all we considered it a success and adjourned back to Xenu's Secret Lair for celebratory pintage. Many photos were taken that will go up in short order, including one of the enturbulated clam surrounded by members of the public clutching our leaflets, and a couple of shots of the e-meters that the clams put out on display later after the demo had finished (for some reason they have given up on attempting to conduct stress tests in the street whilst we're demoing...).

Happy Auditor's Day, clams!