Anonymous had its March raid on Saturday. Appropriately, it was Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard‘s 99th birthday on the day we raided. Our theme was over-the-top rainbow.
I, however, had a different look in mind for myself. Working next door to the monstrosity known as the Founding Church of Scientology, I see them around quite a bit. And the uniform for the Org staff at the Ideal Org location is a black suit and gold pocket square. The shirt varies between black turtleneck and white collared shirt. I have a black suit. I also have a black turtleneck. And with this kind of spoofing in mind, I ordered a gold pocket square. And I dressed up in their uniform, in order to possibly de-legitimize the Scientologists in the eyes of the public. So the question becomes, would you buy a used E-meter from this man?
I wouldn’t. But I would gladly take that You Found The Card card that he’s handing out.
The only downside to this particular weekend was that it was raining a good bit, but it held out for most of our raid. But the threat of rain was enough that I kept the Canon covered, and used Duckie for this raid. Plus Duckie had the added advantage of being pocket-sized, so I could stuff it in my pocket when I wasn’t using it. The whole Scilon-suit bit came off really well, but it wouldn’t work with a big camera around my neck the whole time.
Otherwise, though, the rainbow theme came off really well:
And we had cake…
The cake was rainbow on the inside, too! Win!
We also had plenty of signage, as you might expect:
Group photo!
Then the Scientologists were out in force again this month, this time sporting their “Volunteer Minister” jackets:
Obviously they didn’t get the memo that just because you want to call yourself a minister doesn’t make you one. HT did a wonderful job keeping the Scientologists occupied, which freed us up to interact with the public. I gave out a whole stack of You Found The Card cards. Scientology spokesmodel Sylvia Stanard occasionally came by to talk to us, but was met with silence from us. Talking to Sylvia is like talking to a brick wall, and so there’s really no point in engaging her.
Most amusing was when Tony (the guy with the big mustache, whom I am thoroughly convinced is a moron based on his actions) handed me a flyer that invited me to come to one of their “open houses”, while simultaneously preaching Scientology’s anti-psychiatry stance. Craziness. Will I take him up on his invitation? We shall see, I suppose. If nothing else, I want to see what kind of pull stations the Ideal Org has. I know that they have Edwards Genesis speaker/strobes in there based on observations from my building, but I don’t know if they have the classic Edwards pull station with the stripes, the dual-action Edwards pull station, or something else entirely. I’ve been wondering this for about five months now. Yes, I’m wondering about what the opposition’s fire alarms are. I am a nerd…
We also got lots of honks from passing cars. Best honk of all was near the end of our raid, when a DC fire truck blew its big fire truck horn for us. EPIC!
So there you have it. Next raid is April 17. See you there?