Don't know if this has already been covered earlier, but now that you have all been subjected to a longish period of listening to Lil Davey, this how an international event goes: (for the never-ins :))
For about a month before the event is due to happen, you are subjected to multiple phone calls, EVERY DAY from various orgs inviting you to attend. Whether you say yes or no, those calls will continue until the day of the event. If you say no, I hate the events, extra time will be spent trying to convince you how THIS event is different and more epic, essential to your growth as a being, gives you case gain just watching blah blah. It is painful.
The day of the event:
A hall has been booked which is normally 4 or 5 times bigger than needed, as the staff were not able to muster up as many people as Int management demanded. So even though they are expecting 200 people, a hall that can accommodate 1000 must be booked.
You enter and sit near the back so that you can sneak out for the occasional ciggie. You are ushered to the front along with all the others sitting at the back. The event starts later than advertised, so you are already pissed off.
When it starts, you are nearly blown out of your seat by the volume. At this point you can safely move to the back and tell any staff member that tries to stop you, that the volume is actually hurting your eardrums, and either they let you sit at the back or you are leaving. The lesser of 2 evils is chosen. Turning down the volume is not an option as that volume has been mandated by DM himself. It would not matter if the entire audience stood up and said turn down the volume, they can't / won't. I am talking nightclub music loud here.
DM then proceeds to sherman-speak for 3 HOURS. (Average duration of event is 3 hours, 2.5 if you are lucky.)
There is no intermission.
If you stay for the entire event, the trick is to leave while all the reges are busy with other people. Not easy, but I usually managed it! :)
You get home and your ears are still ringing for several hours afterwards. You can't sleep because of the noise in your ears, plus all the flashing lights in the video have given you a migraine.
The next morning, your phone starts ringing as the follow-ups begin. If you did not buy the latest release at the event, they now start calling you every day to try and convince you to do so.

That's it in a nutshell, folks - fun fun fun!!

Sweet baby Xenu. I'm only about 10 minutes in to the first segment and I'm already thinking how nice waterboarding would be compared to this.

One thing I'm noticing when the crowd shots happen - it's all white folks with the occasional rare exception.
Cap'n Crunched mentions there are people from 16 countries...white folk don't make up 98% of the world but they sure make up 98% of this audience and more than 90% of the first ten minutes of this ordeal.

Good observation chuckicita. The ship has been white washed.

The ringing in your ears is due to the death of the nerves in hair cells (tiny natural sound sensors). When you experience that (along with a period of muffled sound) your hearing has been damaged. It will typically recover - but repeated abuse will build up over time.

On top of everything else, it seems that Scientology can also make you deaf.

Well, I used the volume as a reason not to attend most of the events. It was just too bloody miserable to sit through that several times a year. Plus after the first 5-10 minutes I actually could not keep my attention on what he was saying. Mind numbing - literally. So that meant several hours of twiddling my mental thumbs. So boring!

Completely mind numbing, pointless, stupid drivel most of which was not even true. All that expansion news and how they were saving the world. None of it verifiable.

Not fast enough !!

I wonder if the Sea Org check victims the audience for moulded ear plugs - that's my solution in noisy places that I can't avoid.

Scientologists who are already deaf could just turn of their hearing aid off, like my granddad used to when he was at a social occasion he wasn't interested in.

OT but a sort of funny story.

My Father-in-law used to do this to tune out (we believe - we being the kids/spouses) my M-I-L. It was hilarious as she'd say loudly, "his battery died again - I just replaced it last week...it is worthless." All in the "know" would giggle and Pop-pop would wink. He actually really didn't need a hearing aid that much, just for soft voices. But he'd turn up the TV like he did. When you would speak one on one he had no problem.

My hubby called this selective hearing with technology as an excuse. LOL. The best part was when he'd bang the spoon with mashed taters on it (which mother-in-law didn't care much for) but everyone else at the table knew it was his practical joking nature. She would then tell all of us he didn't know how loud he was banging the spoon due to that "darn battery again." You'd then see Pop-pop's eyes glitter and a small smile tug at his lips. I know that all sounds like a horrible thing to do, he just loved to practical joke, but being 90 he couldn't physically pull the jokes he famously used to. Work with what you've got I guess. It always made family events a bit more fun knowing that he'd come up with something to get the family grinning.

As he's since passed it has now become family tradition at holidays to bang the mashed tater spoon in homage to Pop-pop. Even my M-I-L does it. 😀. Edited for spelling.

Thank you for the much needed laugh today. Mom is 90 and sick and my little sister has cancer. Needed a good family memory laugh. Thanks again.

You and yours will be in my thoughts. It's not easy, I know. With all of the tough times ahead, I suggest grasping hard to love and humor. The last can sometimes be hard to find...but when it's there, save it for the most difficult of days.

I hope the best for your family's illnesses. Remember to take care of yourself as you're needed and loved.

(((Hugs)))

Thank you for your kind words. Still hanging in there.

Take care of yourself. Broad shoulders may still buckle if not tended. My thoughts are, again, with you and yours.

It sounds like him and my granddad would have make a great double-act.

Great story. Am entering the stage of 'everything is different, every day' with an aging parent. Sometimes it is hard to negotiate. But we (parent and I) try to keep humor as an active ingredient of negotiating each day. This story of adjustments to, but continued joy through humor, is inspiring at this moment in my life.

Best of luck to you. I truly believe humor extended Pop-pops life and gave him some strength and normalcy during the rough times of health, not even counting the positive aspects it brought to our family unit. Plus we have wonderful memories now that intertwine through a sad certain state with an inevitable ending. What wasn't inevitable, at least known to us at the time, was how much those moments would mean to us all. Long live the mashed tater spoon!

You and your parent will be in my thoughts. :-)

Thank you - and I am going to hold onto the metaphor (to apply it to my family) of the mashed tater spoon :D.

My guess is yes , they do check. They seem to have policies and control of even the tiniest of details. Those who were had hearing aids and could turn them off, were lucky

She shoots, she scores!

Deaf, dumb, and blind -- sounds about right.

Draco, we in RTC are outraged by your false and defamatory characterization of COB events. What you are saying is proveable bullshit. COB events are happy, upbeat, and always sold out.

You are hereby ORDERED TO REPORT TO RTC for sec checking at your own expense! Failure to comply will result in severe ecclesiastical beatings and the protected religious extraction of your teeth.

http://i1284.photobucket.co...

Haha! First you have to find me! :D
Oooh - that guy second from the right is cute...can he be my ethics officer?

I lasted about a minute and a half into his speech, and I had the volume turned low. What you're describing sounds like Hell. And Miscavige is the devil.

Pretty close to hell, I think.

Yes he is. He is one of LRon's minions., even though we know that he wasn't chosen to take over the establishment, he did and the festering boil continues.

Hideously unpleasant!

"...that volume has been mandated by DM himself..."

So...weird? And petty...and (subconsciously ?) cruel.

Not subconsciously, I'm sure it's very deliberate. It does not matter how stupid his orders are, people will obey. I have never spoken to anybody who was comfortable with the volume levels. It's crazy.
One event I attended yonks ago, was a huge space with a tin roof. Acoustics were awful and then it started to rain. Torrential thunderstorm - as the storm got louder and the rain hammered on the tin roof, they turned the volume up!! It was crazy - you couldn't hear any words - just distorted noise.

So we're pretty sure he's doing it to make everyone in the room uncomfortable. He just hates human life doesn't he?

Did you watch your show?

edit - the show about animals, I mean. I should go to sleep. My writing is deteriorating rapidly...

You're probably asleep by now :)
But yes - I think he did it to make us uncomfortable. After all the hard work he put in terrorizing all the staff, having to order Sherman to re-write his speech for the umpteenth time and micro-managing the hell out of all events, why should we be able to sit back and enjoy it in comfort. He's a very nasty little man. I think he also got off on imagining his voice booming out at all those venues all over the world.

I was, but I'm back...

What a creep. Truly

He'd never have thrived IRL as much as he has inside the bubble.

Sorry you went through all that Draco. And thanks for the answer as always. ; )

You are welcome.

I think he is just narcissistic and thinks what he has to say is SOOO important that it trumps anyone's discomfort.

Lady S, that's a good point.

Good times. I remember them well. You forgot the part about how they check you in. That was a later addition. The implication was that they were watching you and it would be duly noted in your folders that you either did or did not attend. Very Big Brother. Lovely people.

Yeah. Hip hip hooray.

Fortunately, Hubbard proved that high sound volume is like radiation -- it only does damage if your body or you resist it! Besides, in the rare instance of damage to hearing, Dianetics auditing will fix that problem -- you just got an engram restimulated / keyed in, is all. Either that, or a zoned out body thetan needs to be kicked out of the problem part of the ear. No worries. Either Dianetics or Scientology will fix any hearing problems. But if you don't resist the sound waves in the first place, you won't have any problems.
;-)

Good Morning, Bunkerites!
Yesterday was a good day at the National Book Festival (see below). Wish you were here!

How furious it must make Miscavige that a legitimately important author uses the state of Clear to poke fun. Fabulous.

Jealous! :)

OT fyi for anyone that deals with elle. Elle recently made several attempts to derail threads and "find my buttons", to fluster me and get me to stop posting and sharing links to my blog. The methods chosen and topics ignored and addressed have convinced me elle is running off a playbook. The OSA playbook on internet trolling.

Elle has taken the time to learn a lot about me and my blog. And to follow OSA protocol on posting online. I guess it is a kind of compliment to have someone devote time and effort to disrupting my efforts. Thanks elle, I must be saying something you want stopped or you wouldn't put in all the work to shut me up. Maybe even David Miscavige hates my work.

So, I feel I need to up my output now, thanks elle. :-D

Mockingbird 20+ : elle 0.

Go, Mockingbird, Go!

Lol. I don't know how to keep score in internet trolling.

I just took a cue from CoS and made up the stats! But from what you describe, suddenly your words and reach are of enough concern to be watched/studied. I count that as a big win. The biggest would be if 'elle' actually started to get curious based on what s/he is reading.

If they leave Scientology and call you friend, you win the Golden Tory award. I'm one of those hopelessly hopeful people ...I'm rooting for Elle to shake it off.

Any time you're not scrubbing the toilet with a toothbrush you are winning. Keep up the good work.

That's a new one for me.

Scientology knows how, because it's totally made up and arbitrary, just like everything in Scientology. :-)

Her attention to you is all the validation you need, doesn't matter what she says, despite her saying you're irrelevant and boring. You are obviously having an effect. Besides the other posters see her horrible replies and misogyny.
I know it's hard to stay classy and easier to say. Your blog is great, keep up the good work!

I wasn't aware she is misogynistic.