Pictured: Giant African Snail (artist's rendering). Do not drink anything you find in this animal's sinuses.
GateHouse — To the best of my memory, I have not been in that many cults.
Yes, I’ve been drinking at the Knights of Columbus a few times. Yes, I apparently joined something during my brief internship in Eric Massa’s office, but I don’t remember anything about it except being chained to a water heater in a basement as part of my “purification.” Also, I spent most of 2007 totally into “The Secret,” which was a giant waste of time because you don’t see Naomi Watts here serving me pina coladas, now do you? Also, it is possible that I joined the Def Leppard Fan Club in 1988 but in my defense at the time I found “Hysteria” devastatingly awesome and they promised to send me a patch I could sew on my jean jacket, but they never did, which is why I hate Def Leppard to this day, that’s right, Joe Elliott, YOU ARE DEAD TO ME. Also, I briefly subscribed to O Magazine and own a Mac. But that’s it. With the cults, I mean.
This is not because of any objection to honoring false gods and icons — I am all for that. It’s more of a time-management situation. Most cults, at least from what I’ve learned from TV shows, are bigger drains on your personal time than having children; there are all these meetings and ceremonies and self-abusive albinos and every week you have to go see Tom Cruise and act all excited — oooooh, it’s Tom Maverick Cruise, 2001 Box Office Superstar, like he’s not here every Tuesday night. And that’s not even counting the expenses of robes and vestments and hallucinogenic drugs, none of which, incidentally, can be written off, despite what all those quote-fingers professional tax preparers tell you (yeah, thanks again, Aaron).
Yet I do know this: If I were to join a cult, I would want it to be one of those awesome cults, one with snappy matching track suits and the promise of spaceships and some irrevocable invisible superbeing destroying anyone who disagrees with my opinions. I do not think I am a man whose belief structure is easily broken, but I will say that if my cult leader, for instance, told me that my path to eternal salvation lie in the purposeful ingestion of snail mucus, I would absolutely, positively, think about finding a new false idol in an entirely different poorly lit one-bedroom apartment.
.
.
