Okay, this is just creepy. From Wednesday night's South Park, The Return of Chef!:

"Is it any more retarded than the idea of God sending his son to die for our sins? Is it any more retarded than Buddha sitting beneath a tree for 20 years?"

Dude! Trey Parker and Matt Stone READ MY BLOG! It's the ONLY EXPLANATION!!!

I promise that this is my last post this week about Scientology. Of course, this week ends in a couple hours, so that will help me tremendously.

Early this month, Carly sent me the link to Janet Reitman's Rolling Stone exposé, Inside Scientology. I'd read a lot about Scientology during the Tom Cruise Meltdown of Summer '05, but I'd never given much thought to what it must be like to grow up in that church.

That segued nicey into the whole Jason-Dohring-is-a-second-generation-Scientologist epiphany, which left me nice and ready for the South Park debacle. I heard Isaac Hayes had quit South Park because of religious intolerance (whatever), but it was Trey Parker and Matt Stone's comments after their Scientology-themed episode was pulled off the schedule on Wedesday night that made my whole fucking week*:

"FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!

"-Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu"

I mentioned the Parker/Stone comment to a friend at work, who kindly sent me this link to South Park's reveal of the Big Scientology Secret. (Watch it if you don't know. They do a good job of explaining.)

I will say with all honesty that I haven't watched an entire episode of South Park in my life—though I did enjoy the Saddam Hussein/Satan sex scenes in the movie immensely—but I'm starting to think that maybe I should. I did a Replay search for all episodes, and seriously considered setting up the PVR to record all the airings. I even watched Team America: World Police for the first time, though I would have done that anyways, since I've been waiting for it to come onto TMN since it left theatres.

So, in short, Parker and Stone's frank and unapologetic look at Scientology has almost made me forget about the fact that they normally make their living telling fart jokes.

*(Now, it's not that I have anything against Scientology as a belief. Hell, some alien overlord that brainwashed the souls of his enemies and forced them to wander the earth for millions of years seems more plausible than, say, Moses parting the Red Sea or God sacrificing his only son for our sins. It's the fanaticism and the secrecy and the absolute inability to see that some people might find the Xenu thing a bit silly that makes me want to mock. I am so not religious that I find anyone's obsession with religion stupefying. And how do I respond to things I don't understand? With derision. It's just what makes me me.)

A longer post is coming soon, I promise. But in the meantime, I've just learned that Jason Dohring, my beloved Logan on Veronica Mars, is a second-generation Scientologist.

And there goes that fantasy.

Many thanks to the Talkbackers at AICN for the head's up.

Update: Apparently, everybody knew.

People, when are you going to learn? The more money Tom Cruise makes, the more he gives to Scientology. And which talented young engenue will be the next to fall under the Power of Cruise? Natalie Portman? Hillary Duff? Ali Lohan?

Think—think!—before you act, people!

Related: Salon.com's four-part look at The Church of Scientology can be read here, here, here and here. Watch the ad to get your Day Pass.