cientology is in the news again this week, and not just because some green reporter made the mistake of sticking a microphone in front of Tom Cruise again. In a shocking revelation that has rocked the media world, fourteen year old actress and Cruise arm candy Katie Holmes has converted to the oddball religion, leaving the pope speechless and the entire Roman Catholic Church in disarray. But she’s not the only one, and this time it’s not only some weirdly shallow celebrity joining the ranks. In a lesser-publicized footnote, America’s entire scientific community has jumped on the bandwagon, too.

“It’s a natural fit, really,� explained Ralf Menu of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Science? Scientology? I’m actually surprised this didn’t come up earlier. I mean, from all available evidence, it’s really quite obvious that we exist on the seventh ring of the Dunabi, concentric to the Twelfth Dimensional Scrobang. No one seriously debates this.�

“I have to admit, I’d been curious about Scientology ever since I saw that commercial they used to play for Diatnetics,� admitted American Association of Cereal Chemists head Dabney Thomas, because he had to. “You know, with the volcano that’s all erupting and shit and answering questions like ‘Will I see my dog in heaven? Page 47.’ Ever since I saw that I was pretty interested. Because I had a dog when I was a kid, but he was a real bastard so I’m really curious if he got into heaven or not.�

The announcement comes at a crucial time for the funky techno-religion, founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1951 as a beautiful tax dodge. Scientology has been struggling for credibility after years of reports that it charges members tens of thousands of dollars to reveal its deepest spiritual secrets, all of which turn out to read like a really horrible John Travolta movie. But the concensus seems to be that a lack of credibility is the price one pays for following a religion founded by a man famous for making up implausible tales full of far-fetched ideas and fantasies designed to sell books.

“It’s sort of like having a weight loss program founded by Cookie Monster,� mused religious scholar Barnaby Told, who actually does botanical research but is also quite religious, thereby qualifying him for the title. “That’s a tough credibility gap to span.�

This latest conversion will likely change the way that millions think about Scientology, however, and the agreement of America’s scientists might help as well. But not everyone is thrilled with Holmes’ epic conversion from Catholicism, about which Vatican officials say the pope feels personally betrayed.

“The pope has been listless and non-responsive all week,� explained Vatican spokesperson Arnold Grubb. “He’s not even into mini-golf as much as usual. He seems kind of heartbroken, honestly. I hope she’s worth it, Tom.�

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"God and I have an understanding. I don't argue He doesn't exist and he won't argue it about me."

You know how some people are really smart but they're no good at tests? I'm like that—no good at tests. I'm not good at remembering stuff or thinking of things real fast either, and I'm not really good at coming up with ideas of my own or knowing things that people just sort of know. But I'm really bad at tests.

Some people call it test anxiety, like where you get really worried about how you're going to do and forget all the stuff you know. But that's not it. I mean, if I knew the stuff and forgot it, that would be bad enough, but I have no clue what they're talking about. One teacher tried to tell me I was dyslexic, but I told him I don't really go to church at all. I can't believe God would be such a dick, if He exists, and take away all my knowledge of everything just to be spiteful. If that's the way he's going to be about it, I'm never going to church. Just to be spiteful.

I have gone to church before, technically. You always hear about how a church is supposed to be a place where anybody is welcome at any time of day or night, no restrictions, but they're just hypocrites. Next time you're driving home Sunday morning with a little whiskey still sloshing around in your gut drive up the steps and into their doors while the dude, the what you call him, is giving his big God speech. See if you'll be welcome then. I can tell you first hand you won't.

Every once in a while I feel bad about what I've done, or what I am, or the box of Cracker Jacks I got that didn't have no surprise in it, but it's not like I need someone to tell me it's God's plan or something dumb to make me feel better. It doesn't make any more sense to me that God thinks it's funny there's no prize in my snacks exactly when I'm in the mood for a lick-on tattoo.

Just for laughs I went to a church once and the church guy there told me they were full. It didn't sound full, that's what I told him. He said it wasn't full, but they were closed for the holidays, and he didn't want to hurt my feelings. Then he pushed me off the steps and ran back inside. I could hear him locking the doors and him and his friends were laughing. What do you call them? Monks?

I guess I could take better tests if I read books and such. I tried reading the Bible but all that "begat" stuff really pissed me off. They introduce like a hundred and something characters in the first few pages. I'm not much of a reader, but I can tell you that's the kind of bad writing that can keep your screenplay from being produced. I still read about five pages of it, two columns on each, and then nobody ever tested me on it. So you can see why I don't ever want to read a book again just because they say there's going to be a test on it. You never know, they're probably lying.

Nine out of ten times they aren't, yeah. Maybe even ninety-nine out of 100. But reading, you know… it's boring.

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Reader questions come to yours truly in all sizes and forms, from folded paper ninja throwing stars scribbled with questions about loneliness, to strange marriage proposals that wander off on a tangent like "Will you marry me and what the fuck's up with dollar bill changers on vending machines?" But my favorite has to be messages left on the commune's answering machine, like the following:

"Yo, I was just thinkin' about something. I flush my toilet, it goes out in the ocean, right? I mean, not my actual toilet, though that would be kinda funny if I was still sitting on it. Actually, funnier if it was my wife or my friend Ronnie and not me. Not both of them, cuz what the fuck are they doing on my toilet together? But you know what I'm talking about. The loaf. So that shit goes out in the ocean, or like if I puke on the sidewalk in front of Dairy Queen and the dude hoses it off into the drain, that goes into the ocean too, right? And if they're flying elephants on a cargo plane over the ocean and one dies, they just shove it out the back and it falls in the ocean, right? Fast, too, no need to waste a parachute on a dead elephant, you know what I'm saying? Whoooooooo-KERSPLASH! Wow. Anyway, so if all this crap goes in the ocean, what the hell are we doin' swimmin' in there? I'm gonna kick somebody's ass for not telling me the ocean was the world's toilet."

Not exactly the Maserati of reader questions, but it is the least stupid one I've received this month. Roll that factoid around in your head when you can't sleep at night, and see if suicide doesn't appeal. So before you roll your eyes too violently, remind yourself that in an alternate universe, you're reading my latest column on why some ninjas wear red, and whether or not that's supposed to be camouflage for fighting inside volcanoes.

I'll begin by answering one of the questions that came up later in the above caller's ten-minute ramble: Yes, if God took a piss, he'd probably take it in the ocean. It only stands to reason. As a matter of fact, everything that has ever taken a piss, ever, eventually all that ended up in the ocean. Keep that in mind the next time you're water skiing.

How do marine animals cope? Well, they're pissing in there too, so it's not like they can throw stones. The ocean is basically like one gigantic hot tub, and you know nobody crawls out of a nice warm hot tub and scurries wetly into the house just to piss in the sink like a civilized person. The ocean is like one big let-it-all-hang-out party where anything goes, which is why the church has always taken a hard line anti-ocean stance.

The reason all the animals in the ocean don't get diseases from swimming in pee all the time, like you or I would from using the pool down at the YMCA, is that ocean water is jam-packed full of phytoplankton, which is nature's answer to 2000 Flushes Blue. Phytoplankton are tiny, microscopic bugs that don't care what they eat. Seriously, they're so small everything looks like food to them. Try shrinking yourself down to one-tenth the size of a pinhead and see how well you can tell the difference between a turd and a Coney Island corn dog. Hell, try to tell the difference at your normal size.

Phytoplankton turn the world's shame into the basis for the oceanic food chain: themselves. Everything eats phytoplankton, usually on accident since they're so tiny and the water's packed with them like pedophiles at an Aaron Carter concert. Lazy fish just swim around with their mouths open all the time, receiving sustenance from the millions of phytoplankton that get stuck between their teeth. This provides a golden opportunity for marine pranksters like the sea otter, which love nothing more than floating unwrapped candy bars on the ocean's surface just to freak out open-mouthed-swimming fish.

Even phytoplankton won't touch whale shit, however. Once they settle, these colossal loads, known as "coral," provide shelter for thousands of other marine organisms that have no idea where coral really comes from. Everything else though, stupid phytoplankton gladly devour and ask for seconds.

So, the obvious question is, could you just buy a bunch of phytoplankton to keep in your toilet, freeing you from the constant daily grind of flushing and refilling the tank with a hose from the yard because the water company cut off just the water to your toilet to spite you for an unpaid bill and it doesn't rain enough this time of year to justify leaving the lid off and your bathroom window open? In theory, you could. In theory, you could also collect all the little broken bits from the bottoms of bags of pretzels and repackage them as a salty new breakfast cereal, but I wouldn't count on that ship coming in any time soon.

In actual practice, the problems with the phytotoilet are two fold: One, they stopped selling little packets of phytoplankton through the mail after Sea Monkeys really took off and fickle kids forgot all about the magic of microscopic pets. And two, even if you could get them, eventually your toilet would just become completely clogged with phytoplankton themselves, and then it's back to the soul-deadening grind of flushing after each use. Unless you trained your cat or ferret or something to eat phytoplankton, but that might be messing with evolutionary forces that could have disastrous effects millions of years down the line, I don't know.

So the next time you're swimming in the ocean, look for phytoplankton. Because if you don't see any, you're probably swimming in piss. I'm just kidding, they're microscopic and you're definitely swimming in piss. Until next time, I'm Griswald Dreck.

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