If life were more ordinary than it would be easier to get what you are expecting, but then I would have to stop listening to the sage advice of Weird Al. Thus you find the heart of my dilemma ( that and the fact that I can never spell guard right nor guarantee - thank Steve Jobs for autocorrect though).
Life for me should be predictable but is not. My daily plans seldom precede as planned or estimated and are subject to change and more changes that by the time I give up and go to bed nothing went like I figured it would unless I am planning on changing my plans that day.
Sometimes I wonder if it is how my brain works or some cosmic sense of humor on the supreme beings part.
Which brings me back to Scientology.
(yeah I suspect you didn't see this one coming)
Here it is without the benefit of a nutshell: www.whatisscientology.org
and here is a more accurate picture of it: (unless you are Tom Cruise and about to sue Wikipedia again):
Scientology according to Wikipedia
another take on it: Clambaking: Operation Clambake
Mom and I got to talking about it and I quickly realized I had forgotten most of what I knew about the subject of L.Ron Hubbard- other than the detail that his writing was both ponderous and dismal when it got back to the story
In a nutshell, I first met LRH when I read Battlefield Earth the first time (yes I have read it twice).
The book is huge.
The story is not engaging except at rare moments when you can forget the ridiculous character names, the preposterous use of tech and the intergalactic banking practices. (yes the book goes into multi-chapter explanation how banking would be done on a intergalactic level)
So is there anything good about the book (in my opinion)
I found the 11 finger Algebra engaging on a mathematical level.
Some of the character human to alien dynamics are engaging but Hubbard writes them off. The book could be 200-300 pages if you cut all the banking and math out of it.
Anyway I wrote off LRH after Johnny Boy rode off into the sunset with his dog.
A few years later. Dianetics made a major comeback on the Best Sellers lists with a new aggressive advertising campaign. When I made the LRH connection to Dianetics and Scientology I had a good laugh.
LRH in my opinion was a far worse writer than most of the pulp SCi-Fi writers I had read up to that point.
Following the successful resurgence of Dianetics onto the book scene The Church of Scientology then launched re-publishing all of LRH's novels (each one around 1000 pages-it seemed) I remeber them being huge. I even tried to read one- the irony of which now is Xenu.
You see I did not know about Xenu until all these years after reading that first (awful) book- now here I discover that XENU was a major expansion on Scientology and not just a plot device in a biopic Space Opera written by LRH and possibly his church- though they deny all of it.
To the Scientologists LRH has to be a messiah and thus must be without blemish, failure or fault.
To me he was a lousy writer who had no real success until he invented a religion.
Is he a fraud?
No more than Joseph Smith or Brigham Young.
Which is even more of a mouthful- especially since yours truly almost joined that church twice.
yes twice.
the second time I knew it was BS (mostly) but I was lonely and was being tempted by the idea of easy marriage to a beautiful woman- another story for another time.
I didn't because my BS meter was overheating before I could initiate my self-deception.
The bottom line and the point here is thus.
I have a life less ordinary and more whimsical despite people saying that predictability is a good thing
you should look for the unexpected and hope for the impossible but when it comes down to wishing
be more careful since the impossible sometimes is really that.
and that (boys and girls) is life according to me.
Mike
Life for me should be predictable but is not. My daily plans seldom precede as planned or estimated and are subject to change and more changes that by the time I give up and go to bed nothing went like I figured it would unless I am planning on changing my plans that day.
Sometimes I wonder if it is how my brain works or some cosmic sense of humor on the supreme beings part.
Which brings me back to Scientology.
(yeah I suspect you didn't see this one coming)
Here it is without the benefit of a nutshell: www.whatisscientology.org
and here is a more accurate picture of it: (unless you are Tom Cruise and about to sue Wikipedia again):
Scientology according to Wikipedia
another take on it: Clambaking: Operation Clambake
Mom and I got to talking about it and I quickly realized I had forgotten most of what I knew about the subject of L.Ron Hubbard- other than the detail that his writing was both ponderous and dismal when it got back to the story
In a nutshell, I first met LRH when I read Battlefield Earth the first time (yes I have read it twice).
The book is huge.
The story is not engaging except at rare moments when you can forget the ridiculous character names, the preposterous use of tech and the intergalactic banking practices. (yes the book goes into multi-chapter explanation how banking would be done on a intergalactic level)
So is there anything good about the book (in my opinion)
I found the 11 finger Algebra engaging on a mathematical level.
Some of the character human to alien dynamics are engaging but Hubbard writes them off. The book could be 200-300 pages if you cut all the banking and math out of it.
Anyway I wrote off LRH after Johnny Boy rode off into the sunset with his dog.
A few years later. Dianetics made a major comeback on the Best Sellers lists with a new aggressive advertising campaign. When I made the LRH connection to Dianetics and Scientology I had a good laugh.
LRH in my opinion was a far worse writer than most of the pulp SCi-Fi writers I had read up to that point.
Following the successful resurgence of Dianetics onto the book scene The Church of Scientology then launched re-publishing all of LRH's novels (each one around 1000 pages-it seemed) I remeber them being huge. I even tried to read one- the irony of which now is Xenu.
You see I did not know about Xenu until all these years after reading that first (awful) book- now here I discover that XENU was a major expansion on Scientology and not just a plot device in a biopic Space Opera written by LRH and possibly his church- though they deny all of it.
To the Scientologists LRH has to be a messiah and thus must be without blemish, failure or fault.
To me he was a lousy writer who had no real success until he invented a religion.
Is he a fraud?
No more than Joseph Smith or Brigham Young.
Which is even more of a mouthful- especially since yours truly almost joined that church twice.
yes twice.
the second time I knew it was BS (mostly) but I was lonely and was being tempted by the idea of easy marriage to a beautiful woman- another story for another time.
I didn't because my BS meter was overheating before I could initiate my self-deception.
The bottom line and the point here is thus.
I have a life less ordinary and more whimsical despite people saying that predictability is a good thing
you should look for the unexpected and hope for the impossible but when it comes down to wishing
be more careful since the impossible sometimes is really that.
and that (boys and girls) is life according to me.
Mike
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