Electric Youth

Raise your hand if you care that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have had their baby.

Personally, I care only because it means that I get to stop. Hearing. About. It. I think every woman who ever crushed on Cruise as a little girl is heaving a collective sigh of relief that she never got that wish she wrote about in her diary back in '86. I think you could tell me that Tom Cruise eats babies with a chaser of his own filtrated urine and I'd believe you. He's just gotten so unbelievably creepy anymore. I mean, eating his kid's placenta? Raw?

::shudder::

Intrigued by all the press he's gotten, I tried to educate myself a little on the principles of Scientology. A dear friend of mine was once scammed into attending a Scientology meeting under the premise of a job opportunity, and, in her words, "It felt like an after-school special - 'Watch Leah enter the creepy crazy cult.'" People, this stuff is not right! Any religion that bans you from associating with non-members? Is a cult.

I think the only other non-religious entity to which I can compare something like Scientology is the technicolor world of Mary Kay salesladies. Equally fake and perky and "high on life", they will hound you relentlessly to become one of the fold. "Why don't you just come listen to this 20-minute marketing pitch? Even if it's just to help me meet my quota so I can get a pair of pearl earrings. You don't even have to listen." Of course, the unspoken subtext here is that, after attending, you will be hit with a barrage of e-mails, phone calls, solicitations, and baptisms by proxy so great that you'll eventually snap, screaming, "Smooth skin! I want smooth, alien-like skin, with absolutely no variation in color or texture! And I want to spread this Truth to all the women of the world! Please, let me join you!"

In reality, I think that Scientologists and Mary Kay ladies are the kind of equal but opposite forces you heard about back in AP physics. Think about it: Tom Cruise ate his kid's entrails so that he could forever look 35. The inevitable 3rd World War won't be fought for oil or political power...it will be fought for skin-care products.