22 Jul 2000

bwarrNOSPAM@pacbell.net

Picket Report, 22 July, 2000
Signs:
Scientology, $360,000 Space Alien Cult.
Scientology Says You're Covered With Dead Space Cooties!!!
Flyers: Xenu, scientology's Secret Space-Alien
Flyers distributed: 22

Fantastic New Discovery! The Stealth Picket

I've been toying with the idea of a stealth picket for a while now. Yesterday, Shydavid and I took the idea for a test drive.

Every Friday downtown, there's a little Happy Hour street fest, with a live band and a beer garden. It does draw in some folks, and there's heavy summertime traffic as well.

Shydavid came over in the afternoon. By the time he arrived, I had printed out a copy of Roland's Xenu flyer and text for our signs. One sign said, "Scientology, $360,000 Space Alien Cult." The other said, "Scientology Says You're Covered With Dead Space Cooties!!!"

Clad in cunningly matched "Scientology Kills' T-shirts, we first went to Kinko's and ran off 50 copies of the Xenu flyer. The color graphic on the flier did not print out on my machine, so I replaced it with a nice alien clipart from one of my CDs. It printed out nicely!

We stopped by to pick up our signs, and hit the street with great stealth. We skirted the beer garden, which was surrounded by chain link fencing and sparsely populated, and settled in the patio outside at the Blarney Stone. We arranged our signs for optimum viewing by passersby, and I went in to order us a couple o' Guinness while David started folding flyers.

As it was a stealth picket, we minded our biz, but it wasn't long before we got our first customers, a couple from Washington State who told us of their visit to the Hubbard Life Museum in Los Angeles. We corrected the inaccuracies depicted there about Hubbard's fallacious biography for them, and gave them a flyer. Suddenly, the woman asked my name.

"Barb," I replied.

"Do you know a girl named Brynn?" she asked.

I allowed that I did not.

"She came down to San Diego last year. She stayed in IB, do you know Michelle?"

Turns out, I do indeed know Michelle, she's a friend whom I've known for many years.

"I just had a feeling you were THAT Barb," she said. "Michelle told us about you."

I have prevailed at several of Michelle's parties, regaling the revelers with tales Scientological! Evidently the tales have spread all the way up the coast! Good!

Another passerby liked my space cootie sign so much, he asked to take a picture of it. We gave out a few flyers at the Blarney Stone before casting off to troll other waters at the patio of Patrick's II. We had a small problem there, as Mario, the bartender, has been inoculated by yours truly and didn't want our signs facing the street. Minor footbullet for our side, but he didn't ask us to remove our shirts. More passersby picked up on the T-shirts, and we gave out more flyers. One guy said, "Scientology! They suck!" Turns out he lives across the street from the org! He took a flyer, perhaps he'll share it with his neighbors! The signs were irrelevant. We stayed for one beer and moved on.

Several people stopped to talk to us on the street. A German couple commented on the signs, but refused flyers as they already knew about the cult. A surprising number of people turned down flyers because they already had been inoculated by television programs featuring the Happy Fun Kult. Good! From Israel to Germany, the mask of Scientology is slipping fast.

We proceeded to Sanban, a Japanese sushi joint, for snackulation. (only 3 blocks from the org!) There was a sign holder with no sign in it, so David gave it the space alien cult sign to hold. The Sanban staff didn't mind, in fact, I gave a couple of them flyers. Our signs got the attention of a group from the ComiCon convention, who are online and knew a great deal about Scientology already. We had a nice discussion with them about a wide range of cult behavior and actions; it was nice to see that the efforts of critics who post web pages are being appreciated by the public.

On the way back to my place, I noted how amusing it was, walking through the crowds on the sidewalk. You could hear murmurings in our wake containing the word Scientology! It's amazing how many people commented on our effort to educate the public, how many already knew about the cult, and how many people mistook us for Scientologists despite the 'Kills' T-shirts!

Andreas, how about a T-Shirt that says, "I am NOT a Scientologist!"

It sure beats picketing Gold Base, although we missed the pleasure of Keith and Ida's company, and Ida's superb hospitality! Had a few beers, some good conversations, no Scientologists to deal with, and gave out 22 flyers, possibly a record for a San Diego picket.

The Stealth Picket concept does work very well. When not in official 'picket mode,' people are very inclined to approach with questions and comments. The businesses don't seem too inclined to give you the boot if you're a paying customer, and we didn't shill from the patios; like the spider we spun our web silently and waited for our prey to come to us. Unlike spiders, or Scientologists for that matter, we had no intention of sucking the raw meat dry, but rather, drying up the raw meat so the orgs will starve to death.

--
barb

"Every week, every month, every year, every decade and now every century, Scientology does weird and stupid things to damage its own reputation." -Steve Zadarnowski

http://www.xenu.net
http://www.xenutv.com (see live Scientologists in their natural state!)