You know what? I truly don't give a shit about Tom Cruise (though if he was being held upside down over an alligator pit, I'd pay money to see that) but I have to weigh in with my two cents.

I'm thinking here that this whole "OMG I AM TOM CRUISE WATCH ME FREAK OUT AND ACT LIKE MY BRAIN FALLS OUT MY EARS LIKE I AM A CRACKBABY!" is another one of those "HI I'M TOM CRUISE I SAVE PEOPLE!" things. Remember, back a few years ago when Tom Cruise couldn't walk out the door without saving someone?

Yeah, you know you remember. He saved someone from a lion pit or something, and then someone from drowning, and then NASA called him up and asked him to do a deep-space rescue BECAUSE HE'S TOM CRUISE, and then Minority Report came out and we all went and saw it and we all thought it was shit, but it had TOM CRUISE in it!

And somewhere in there someone said "Hey, I think this is all STAGED SAVING PEOPLE OH MY GOD TOM CRUISE, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO US??" Because, of course, he was saving people because he's so nice and Scientology says you should because of the Tibetans or something.

(As a side note, that is officially the most times I have ever used 'because' in a sentence.)

And then I stopped paying attention because I liked the idea that Tom Cruise and his publicist sat down over an eight-ball and decided that this movie of his, which may or may not have actually been Minority Report, wasn't THAT great and it was gonna SUCK at the Box Office unless he had this amazing run of publicity. And since he'd saved ONE person (whether genuine or not I neither know nor care; I merely smear) as a sort of a "HEY SCIENTOLOGY IS NOT THAT WACKY WATCH ME ENGAGE IN YOUR GOOD SAMARITAN VALUES, PUNY HUMANS, I MEAN CHRISTIANS!" activity/workshop, they decided it would be best to have him save LOTS of people.

The coke was talking when someone suggested that he, you know, NOT walk around claiming to believe in a religion that told him he was some sort of oh-what-the-hell-is-her-name, you know, the one from Voyager or maybe it's DS9 that has the worm in the pouch that's actually her, only in Tom Cruise's case, it's aliens filling him up, not worms in separate pouches.

So, now we're at this point in time when I've decided that Tom Cruise is a lying sack of shit, and Scientology is just as bananas as I think it is, and by the way, if you have A LOT of money (asstard, I could use some of that if you're in the mood for handouts) you can get people to do really stupid things for a piece of that.

Actually, if you're Jackass, I think you can get them to do it for free.

But the point is, the whole "I AM TOM CRUISE AND I SAVE PEOPLE!" thing worked, at least for a while, at least until we all said "You know, I can go whole weeks without walking outside and seeing someone drowning in a sewage ditch, and given the smell, I'd really be more likely to put my foot on their head anyway. HOW DOES TOM CRUISE DO IT??"

And then someone else said "It's called fuckloads of cash meet the publicist, asstards!" And then everyone said "FI FOR SHAME TOM CRUISE!"

So when Vanilla Sky came out, he had to divorce Nicole Kidman. No great loss, he wasn't using her anyway. And it worked out well for her too, because she had some weirdass movie out at the same time and then the press could talk about how BRAVE she was, and how DIFFICULT this was, and I haven't seen her fucking weep once, and anyway, she and Cruise and a rentboy named Guillermo have a standing appointment on Saturdays at the Bel Vista Motel outside LA, where they watch Guillermo roll around in things and discuss religion and politics. (Not even my mind, or my mind on CRACK can come up with some way for Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise to have sex. Maybe if he wasn't so full of colonising alien souls, there'd be room in there for, you know, semen. Or something.) Next week, Cruise is bringing his press clippings.

But now! Now we come to the crux of the matter! And this has devoted at least fifteen minutes of my life to Tom Cruise! So we shall never speak of this again! Since then the Scientologists will eat us!

He has another movie coming out. He sucks as an actor. He's not getting enough out of the whole Katie Holmes thing, because by now we all know he's gay. (He and Hugh oh-god-I-cannot-think-of-his-name-because-I-hate-him-so-much-NOT-Hugh-Jackman are shacking up in Florida on alternate Thursdays.) And he's got no one to divorce and we're all on to him about the saving people thing.

So he has a good old fashioned Hollywood freakout! But because, I don't know, the aliens are allergic to cocaine or something, he decides to make it a SCIENTOLOGY FREAKOUT DISCO INFERNO YEAH YEAH BABY!

Scientology has gotten more web traffic in the last week than it has since TEH INTARWEB was built by Al Gore in his basement on a rainy Saturday. We're all (or YOU all are, I have better things to do) waiting around to find out what TOM CRUISE WILL DO NEXT!

And yer all gonna go see War of the Worlds, too.

Think about this, my children, think about this before you go forth in peace to write checks for large sums to me. Somewhere, someone is converting to Scientology RIGHT NOW because TOM CRUISE said so. And if you are a Scientologist, you get to FREAK OUT ON OPRAH. And because no one quite believes you did that, MOCK YOURSELF ON THE TONIGHT SHOW!

Somewhere, someone is believing they are full of little aliens because of all this discussion of TOM CRUISE in the media and the fact that MSN is practically begging you to TAKE THIS SCIENTOLOGY QUIZ!

Actually, I think he's taking his press clippings next week AND the week after. YARDS OF THEM GUILLERMO WILL DIE OF A COMBINATION OF INK EMBEDDED IN HIS SKIN AND PAPER CUTS!

Think of Guillermo. Don't go see War of the Worlds. Don't become a Scientologist. Don't discuss Scientology. Don't ride in cars with Scientologists. And most of all, DO NOT believe Tom Cruise when he tells you ANYTHING. When the spirits move him (and the cocaine moves his publicist) HE WILL LIE.

My prediction is that War of the Worlds will make fucking bank, despite being SHIT. And then we won't hear from TOM CRUISE until his next movie, at which point he will probably be pioneering head transplants or something.

Maybe I can help you, but more likely not,

Channon