Matt Damon is right up there. He's a great NPR interview, anyway.

::nods:: I think he's my favorite NPR interviewee ever. John Waters is pretty close, though.

The thing that I just can't wrap my brain around is why people still join. There's the crazy tom cruise shit and the xenu and the clams. Scientology is a laughing stock, isn't it?

This thing is, it isn't all bad. Not only isn't it all bad, some of the things are really good. So. Who gives a hoot about Xenu and Airdales and volcanos, anyway? That stuff is kind of peripheral inside the org anyway, as it is all "higher level" stuff (@@). But yeah, they never take your name off a list, so people who leave/have been gone for years, decades, are still counted as members. I could go on and on for days about it, if anyone really cared to. (In case it's not clear, I'm so glad I'm not in it anymore, and I haven't been in it since 1977 or 78). Count it up as one more B'ta who was in a freakass church.

According to Tivo, we don't have FNL tonight. Is it a repeat?

FNL was new here on the East Coast.

I could go on and on for days about it, if anyone really cared to.

As I recall, what you've said about it that I've read has been fascinating and kind of scary. And not unlike other FAC stories I've seen from peeps 'round these parts, except perhaps more intense.

Ah, apparently FNL has lower priority than House and Entourage. Which is, of course, very very wrong.

meara,

I'm super picky about glasses, so it'd be hard to order frames without trying them on, but...for like, $60 instead of $400, I could be a little less picky.

Not even $60! It's for like $20. I'm willing to try it for $20! Or even $12. Cause the price is frame + lens!

Perkins, did you get a MacBook Air?

No. J. has one though, so I can admire hers.

It's an interesting world. I had a great perspective, too. I was the kid in the corner for a lot of really interesting things: a big coup that OMG was just outrageous, the golden days of big investors in on an official movie project, a comm ev (like a court martial), worked for a Scn. law firm that specialized in shell corp/investments, hangin' out back then with people who now are, like, #3 and #4 in the worldwide org... I wish I could write worth sh*t cuz it would be fun to write about some of this stuff. Only I still am under a NDA, I believe, so. Not so much.

FNL: That was just heartbreaking! Smash! And Matt! And then Tami stranding Julie at the DMV !!!

And next week - for our season finale: stuntcasting .

I've got a "kids nowadays" questions. Are twenty somethings a little more reluctant to ask questions that might get taken as challenging than older generations?

Cause I gave a presentation on carbon trading the other day. (Completely unplanned. I was just there to watch the presentation, but the person who supposed to give was delayed by homeland security. So since I was there, and reasonably knowledgeable on the subject there I was with no notes, no preparation, nominated to give the presentation.)

Any at the end of a half hour, I took some questions. And there were good ones, but they all were neutral or supportive of the position the talk took. And since the talk was opposing carbon trading, and that is really a minority position, I knew everybody watching could not agree. And I had seen some skeptical expressions on faces as I was talking.

So I asked outright if anyone had other perspectives they wanted to share, or doubts or rebuttals or refutations. And when I still was getting no responses, I mentioned that I did not believe that civil disagreement with a speaker was in any way impolite, that part of public exchanges of ideas was a willingness to expose mistakes, and question facts or logic that seemed wrong.

And the students kind of glanced at one another, and there were all sorts of challenges. There really were a lot of doubts, but the students seemed to need permission to express them.

I don't know if this is a generational thing, or a regional thing or what. Anyone encountered anything like this recently?