Two memes on my radar

[prog]

New meme:

Suddenly, everyone hates Tom Cruise.

I am not sure why this is. Some strange parodic references to this and that have trickled down to me, but without context they are meaningless. They do provide me with google terms I can use, however. Probably I'll go research them now, but I just wanted to note this here before I figure out what's going on.

---

Just-noticed meme:

People who run for exercise don't jog; they run. And the word for these people is: runners.

I wonder if this is just regional. I want to jump to the sexier conclusion that it's actually the result of a successful rebranding effort by the running-for-exercise community, since "jogger" is probably right down there with "mime" for most middle-Americans.

Comments

[xymotik.livejournal.com]

Tom Cruise has been going on a Scientologist kick and saying that psychiatric drugs are Teh Bad. He publicly criticized Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants after she had post-partum depression, and then he went off on a TV interview sayin' that he knew the history of psychiatric medicine far better than most people. Brooke Shields wrote back in a guest column in the NY Times and made a wild guess that TC had never had post-partum depression.

I'm not sure what the fuss is about, because everyone knows that modern medicine is all a sham and spending tens of thousands of dollars to exorcise the Thetans from your body is all worth it. What? You haven't heard of them? They're the spirits of the aliens who were thrown in the volcanoes by Evil Galactic Ruler Xenu 75 million years ago and now they POSSESS US ALL.

Just last week I was at a mall in San Jose and there was a kiosk, complete with e-meters, offering free "stress tests." I also seem to remember that when you were here 5.5 years ago we saw a big Scientologist building on Market in SF.

Now he's marrying a 26-year-old or something, and they're both gonna live happy Scientologist lives forever and ever. Awwwwww, isn't that sweet?

[glowingwhispers.livejournal.com]

I say hip hip hurray to Tom Cruise for drawing attent to the political and profit driven history pharma psychiatry. Then again, I myself did an MA thesis that argued similar views.

[prog.livejournal.com]

You did an MA thesis that argued that all psychiatry (and, by extension, the very concept of mental disorder) is a scam perpetrated by a vast global conspiracy?

If not, then you probably don't really hold similar views to TC and his Scientologist brethren.

[glowingwhispers.livejournal.com]

Yep. I sort of did argue that. See: http://www.livejournal.com/users/glowingwhispers/1971.html

[prog.livejournal.com]

Huh. It's been happening here too. Is a coordinated evangelization effort by TCoS underway?

[xymotik.livejournal.com]

Scientologists have been going after celebrities for a long time: there's both money and influence there. But I wonder, if they're trying to broaden their base, are programmers (or at least geeks in general) the next target? Boston and SF are arguably still the programming capitols of the US, and geeks as a whole have plenty of disposable income, plus they usually enjoy sci-fi, so maybe that's Scientology's reasoning.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Interesting notion. I could enumerate reasons why this would be spectacularly flawed reasoning on the Church's part, but I won't bother since you can probably do the same.

More likely that they're doing this all over the place but most of my friends are in one people's republic or the other, so I haven't heard.