Respect the crock.

By now I'm sure you've all seen the above video in which Tom Cruise flaps his gibs for nine and a half minutes about . . . well, nothing in particular. I mean, ostensibly it's about Scientology and how ZOMG AWESOME it is to be part of it, but round about a minute and a half in it's pretty much just Cruise on autopilot, talking to hear himself talk, luxuriating in the aroma of his own metaphorical farts, with the occasional maniacal laughter or Creepy Face thrown in like some kind of bad Bond villain. I was halfway expecting some long pause after the end of Cruise's speech, after which this timid voice offscreen says, "Dude, all I asked was whether you were still into the Scientology thing, and where the bathroom is."

At any rate, it's all the proof you could still need that Cruise is so crazy shithouse rats won't even hang out with him, and they were playing the audio on one of the sports-talk stations here in town the other day and laughing hysterically. The question was posed as to which American football coach is most likely to be a Scientologist, and one guy said Mike Martz (formerly of the St. Louis Rams) and another said Mike Leach (currently with Texas Tech), but I'd go with Urban Meyer. The creepy stare, the secretive operation, the questionable recruiting tactics . . . if he's not an OT III yet, he's at least been audited.

But anyway, this is all just leading up to something my sister found that, if you can fathom it, ratchets up Scientology's level of crazy a couple more notches. She found where Radar magazine had posted some sample questions from the questionnaire that Scientology auditors ask people while they're being E-metered, and it's like the Proust Questionnaire for people who think the government has planted microchips in their braisn. Yet at the same time it makes perfect sense, because anyone who'd take these questions seriously is also the kind of person who'd totally buy a story about a galactic overlord named Xenu killing billions of people in nuclear explosions and releasing their damaged spirits to inhabit and infect human beings.

Just for poops and giggles I decided to rip a page straight out of baby sis's book and answer the questions. Enjoy!

Have you ever enslaved a population?
See, one question in and we're already bringin' the crazy like whoa. And this is typical of the vague-ass questions Scientology traffics in. A population of what? If I had an ant farm, would ants count? How big is a "population"? If I had a group of a dozen or so campaign volunteers working for me back in, say, 2004, ordering them around mercilessly and even extracting sexual favors from some of them -- not that I did that -- would that count? In the end I'm gonna go with a tentative "no," but there's still ample time to revise that statement.

Have you ever debased a nation's currency?
I spread nasty rumors about the złoty one time, and there's a video on the Internet of me peeing on a 14-year-old Congolese franc, but that's about it.


You dirty, filthy whore.

Have you ever killed the wrong person?
No. If anything I've been letting too many of the wrong people live.

Have you ever torn out someone's tongue?
Only the mascot for the Calgary Flames, and he was totally asking for it.

Have you ever been a professional critic?
No. In my capacity as a critic, I have never been anything but unprofessional.

Have you ever wiped out a family?
The temptation to make a masturbation joke here is killing me, but there are just so many possibilities, and out of fairness, if I can't make them all, I won't make any. Feel free to leave your own in the comments, though.

Have you ever tried to give sanity a bad name?
Nope. Love, comedy, journalism, the Gillett family, democracy, yes, but never sanity.

Have you ever consistently practiced sex in some unnatural fashion?
There are those who would say the fact that I've ever had sex period is somewhere short of natural.

Have you ever made a planet, or nation, radioactive?
In spite of my best efforts, no. But I'll get you yet, Equatorial Guinea.

Have you ever made love to a dead body?
Technically, no, but there was that girl Amy I dated a few summers back who did a spot-on impression of one.

Have you ever engaged in piracy?
One time I hijacked a truck full of gun parts and inadvertently got four other guys dragged into a police lineup as part of an elaborate setup to get us all to pull heists for a Hungarian mobster, but that may have been the plot of "The Usual Suspects." So let's mark that one "pass," too.


That's me on the far left, of course.

Have you ever been a pimp?
Figuratively, yes. Briefly. And Big Daddy Kane is right, it wasn't easy. Literally, no, unless you count using my dog to pick up chicks, or the time I set a friend of mine up with this girl so that I could have a shot at her best friend. I don't like to make rash generalizations, but that is always, always a horrible idea. (The set-up-the-friend thing, not the pick-up-girls-with-a-dog thing. The pick-up-girls-with-a-dog thing is cash money. What were we talking about again?)

Have you ever eaten a human body?
I'm going to steal Ann's answer and assume that being Catholic and taking Communion counts. We kind of make a big deal out of it, actually.

Have you ever disfigured a beautiful thing?
Not on purpose, but Katia, the Ukrainian waitress I went out with a few years ago, was so beautiful that I probably disfigured her just by standing next to her.

Have you ever exterminated a species?
In spite of my best efforts, no. But I'll get you yet, Vespula maculifrons.

Have you ever been a professional executioner?
No, but I have been a professional sexecutioner. (That was before I was appointed to the office of Chancellor of the Sexchequer.)

Have you given robots a bad name?
This question is just random and retarded enough that I can only assume Tom Cruise contributed it himself. What the fuck does this mean? Have I been casting aspersions on the otherwise sterling reputations of Asimo and R2-D2? Or are they asking me if I have designed and constructed a line of robots so shoddy and malfunction-prone that it's damaged the reputation of the entire robot industry? And why is Scientology so concerned about the robots, anyway? I wonder if this isn't all part of some master plan cooked up behind closed doors in the halls of Scientology power, to get us to waste all our sperm fucking robots while they have sex with real people, spread their seed far and wide and end up overrunning the world with Scientological spawn.

But maybe I'm just being paranoid.


At any rate, I couldn't give robots any worse a name than this guy already has.

Have you ever set a booby trap?
Yeah, I did that whole prop-the-bucket-of-water-on-top-of-the-door thing to my sister and a friend of hers when we were little. The execution left something to be desired.

Have you ever failed to rescue your leader?
No, I'm generally the one driving my leader out into the middle of nowhere and then leaving him.

Have you driven anyone insane?
Yes, if by "anyone" you mean "everybody."

Is anybody looking for you?
Yes -- Melissa Theuriau, Kristen Bell, Jill Wagner from the Mercury car commercials, Rosario Dawson, Erin Andrews, Ivanka Trump, and former Miss Georgia Monica Pang. Though that last one is because I bet her fifty bucks she couldn't eat two whole racks of Daddy D'z ribs in one sitting and she totally did and I haven't paid her.


You can't tell by looking at her, but she can pack away some ribs.

Have you ever set a poor example?
Asking that question is a category mistake.

Did you come to Earth for evil purposes?
First let's address the question of whether I "came to Earth" period. Can you really "come somewhere" from your mom's vagina? If so, then I suppose I did, but I don't remember doing so with any evil intent. Then again, my mom was in labor with me for like 23 hours, so if she divines some nefarious intent from that, I guess I can't blame her.

Are you in hiding?
Yes. In fact, "Doug Gillett" is just a pseudonym (not to mention my screen name on nakedguntotinggrannies.org).

Have you systematically set up mysteries?
No. Other people typically set them up for me, and I don't figure them out.

Have you ever made a practice of confusing people?
Again, it's more other people making a practice of confusing me, but then I'm really not all that bright.

Have you ever philosophized when you should have acted instead?
I'm not sure how to answer that question. This is going to require some thought.

Have you ever gone crazy?
It's been known to happen -- usually involving some kind of chemical stimulus, but that certainly isn't a deal-breaker. If it helps, most of the time it has something to do with football or politics. On most other things I can keep it under control.


Doesn't do my toaster oven a lot of good now, though.

Have you ever sought to persuade someone of your insanity?
No, my insanity pretty much sells itself.

Have you ever deserted, or betrayed, a great leader?
When Bill Clinton admitted that he had had sexual relations with that woman, I was pretty pissed, and almost decided I was done with him, but then the impeachment hearings became such a farce I decided I'd stick with him just to piss off the Republicans. And the rest is history!

Have you ever smothered a baby?
No, but I scattered and covered one. It was just a game we were playing. Trust me, the kid's fine.

Do you deserve to have any friends?
What the fuck kind of question is this? It sounds like something that would've been written by Ashley, the girl in third grade who straight-up hated me the minute my family moved to town. Seriously, I didn't do anything to her, she hated my ass as soon as I started at my new school. Now that I think about it, though, it may have been one of those I-have-a-crush-on-you-so-I'm-gonna-make-your-life-a-living-hell kinds of things that school-aged kids are always doing to one another. What was this question about again? Oh, right, whether I deserve to have friends. Well, you know what, I'm going to avoid the obvious answer here and go with "yes." I can be one abrasive motherfucker sometimes, I won't deny it, but you know what? I'm damn entertaining, people. And while I may tell you to your face that your football team sucks or your new favorite band is totally gay, once you get beyond superficial stuff like that I'm fiercely loyal. I might knock you around just for the hell of it, but I'll do your enemies a hundred times worse.

Have you ever castrated anyone?
You mean a human, or just like a bull or something? Because if it's "a bull," then no.

Do you deserve to be enslaved?
Absolutely. I've been a very bad person. Very bad. Naughty, even. Not only do I deserve to be enslaved, I should probably be spanked soundly whilst doing so.


Who wants to do the honors?

Is there any question on this list I had better not ask you again?
The castration thing, for starters. That shit's just not funny. Oh, and the question about whether I deserve to have any friends. Seriously, who asks a question like that?

Have you ever tried to make the physical universe less real?
Well, a few years ago I actually spent a few days living in a world where Robin, the ridiculously hot bikini-contest-winning waitress at the Hooters on Lakeshore, would actually go out with me. So in my own way, I guess you could say yes, I have.

Have you ever zapped anyone?
Let me ask Scott Baio what exactly that entails and I'll get back with you.

Have you ever had a body with a venereal disease? If so, did you spread it?
Have I ever had a body? What, like had one in my possession? Or is this question in reference to my own body? Either way, the answer's no, thank God. Then again, maybe this is a reference back to that question about making love to a dead body, in which case I have another answer to that "Is there any question on this list I had better not ask you again" thing.

Done! I don't know about you, but I personally found this to be a valuable experience, because after answering the questions, I became even more confident in the knowledge that I'm in no danger whatsoever of getting roped in by Scientology, no matter how much Tom Cruise insists it's going to save the world. I propose that we start sending this around to take the place of all those lame time-wasting "Where are you right now? What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?" questionnaires that show up in your e-mail, and I encourage y'all to post your answers on your own blogs. C'mon, people, it's time to get clear!

ADDED: By popular demand, here's FunnyOrDie.com's video of Jerry O'Connell doing his staggeringly spot-on Cruise impression. This already puts O'Connell in the running for an Academy Award for best actor in 2009.