Bull Hubbard

       So I had this great idea to do a column on Scientology and make fun of them because I had heard somewhere that one of Scientology’s tenets was that millions of years ago, aliens landed on the earth and fornicated with monkeys and that was how humans came into being.  I thought, wow, that’s some funny right there.  Then, I was gonna say something about the universe being one big crap shoot because when aliens have sex with monkeys, you get humans, and how when humans have sex with monkeys, you get AIDS.  (Assuming, as I naturally do, that every rumor I heard in 1987 was true.  Except for that one about Michelle Brown giving handjobs behind the cafeteria during morning break.  She didn’t.  Dammit.)

       Well, clearly I had to investigate this, because something that funny would just write itself, you know, and I’m pretty lazy.  So I looked into. 

       It’s not true. 

       I don’t know where I got that idea from, but it was wrong.  On the plus side, (or maybe, the minus side, I can’t decide), I’m stuck with the film running through my head of a smarmy E.T. pouring Vodka Gimlets down Curious George’s throat and then riding him like, well, a drunken monkey. 

       So now what do I do.  My idea for a column is shot, and if I try to pawn of another one of those “hey, let’s make fun of bad songs from the 80’s” bullshit pieces again, I stand to lose one, if not both, of my loyal readers.  Turns out I’m not so dead in the water, after all.  While Scientology is not so crazy as to believe aliens went around raping monkeys to make humans, their real beliefs are actually, if you can believe this, crazier.  I know, I know, I was stunned too.

        So what makes them crazy?  This does.  They believe that 75 million years ago, Xenu, an alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy," shipped billions of people from all over the galaxy to Earth in Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs.  No really. 

    What?  What’s a Douglas DC-8, you ask?  Why it’s an airlpane so advanced, so beyond our technology, they stopped making it 1972.

        Wow.  Just wow.

        Now listen people, I grew up an awkward white kid on the mean streets of suburbia, so know two things: heavy metal music circa 1982-1987, and science fiction – they got me through some rough times, man, rough times.  And I can tell you L. Ron Hubbard was one hell of a good science fiction writer.  But you shouldn’t found a religion of his stuff.

        Here’s my theory.  L. Ron wasn’t trying to start a religion, or anything else.  The well had simply run dry.  I mean, come on.  I have my bad days too, but an ancient alien ruler transporting billions of people to earth on outdated airliners just to blow them up with hydrogen bombs?  Dude had just lost it. 

        He wrote that down in his little notebook and read it back a week later.  He knew it was so insipid, so blasphemously stupid, that no self-respecing scince fiction fan was gonna buy it.  But disillusioned religious zealots might .  Apparently they’re a lot more gullible than geeky 14-year-olds. 

    A story so bad even the SciFi channel wouldn’t turn it into a movie, but you sold it to millions of saps every where.  And tax free to boot.

    Game, Set and Match, Mr. Hubbard.