On Jul 19, 2005, at 7:16 AM, Sal Sunshine wrote:
x-tad-biggerOur summer of Tom Cruise's madness and Katie Holmes' creepy path toward zombie bridedom has been a useful reminder of how truly strange Scientology is. By now those interested in the /x-tad-biggerx-tad-biggerCruise-Holmes saga/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger may be passingly familiar with the church's creation myth, in which an evil, intergalactic warlord named Xenu kidnaps billions of alien life forms, chains them near Earth's volcanoes, and blows them up with nuclear weapons. Strange as Scientology's pseudo-theology may be, though, it's not as entertaining as the life story of the church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard./x-tad-bigger
http://www.slate.com/id/2122835/
x-tad-biggerBy that time, in any case, he had gone into hiding. On or around Jan. 17, 1986, Hubbard suffered a catastrophic stroke on a secluded ranch near Big Sur, Calif. A week later he was dead. Scientology attorneys arrived to recover his body, which they sought to have cremated immediately. They were blocked by a county coroner, who, according to Scientology critics, did an autopsy that revealed high levels of a psychiatric drug (Vistaril). That would seem like an embarrassment given the church's hostility to such medications (witness Tom Cruise's /x-tad-biggerx-tad-biggerrecent feud/x-tad-biggerx-tad-bigger with Brooke Shields), but it didn't stop the church from summoning thousands of followers to the Hollywood Palladium days after Hubbard's death. There they were told that Hubbard willingly discarded the body after it was no longer useful to him, and that this signified his ultimate success: the conquest of life that he embarked upon half a century ago. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Hubbard's ultimate success lay in convincing millions of people he was something other than a nut.
So much for keeping away from psychiatric meds./x-tad-bigger
