Jordan vs. Scientology

So I woke up Saturday morning on some couch of a guy I didn't know in Portland, Oregon after a weird night at a DIVE karaoke bar.
Scott had left me alone and I had to catch a plane at midnight that night, so I had a whole day to kill in Portland.

The guy who owned the couch happened to work for apple. So he hooked me up with a contact to get a new free battery and case for my computer, cutting ahead of the line of hundreds of people wanting the new iPhone at the apple shop.

After that, I was roaming the streets trying to get the feel of the city when I ran into a pack of wild and feral protesters outside a church of Scientology.


They were called "Portland Anonymous".
A group of computer nerds bent on causing protests and general irritation against the church of Scientology. They are a branch of a group "Anonymons" that are all over the world - Even New Zealand.
They told me the group originated as a bunch of geeks who used to hack myspace accounts ("So you were the jerk! I said to one guy), but then they decided to use their skills of subversion to subvert something more meaningful.

I hung out and heard some of their wild accusations for a while. eg. Rampant lawbreaking, Covert Imprisonment of excommunicated leaders, murder, maltreatment of various enemies of the church etc etc.

After joining them in holding a sign that said "Religion is Free - Scientology isn't" for about 20 minutes, I decided that because the Scientologists didn't know me, I would go in and infiltrate the church for them and see if I could get anything juicy.


I opened the door and I was met by a young man in a tie and vest, who kind of looked like a Mormon, I asked if I could speak to someone about Scientology. He looked at his watch and then yelled back beyond a green curtain "Anyone still here who can talk to someone??"
After silence for a while I hear a deep voice say from the back "I'll give him 5 questions, and 5 questions only".

He ushered me behind the green curtain where I met an older man who was busy working on something. Without looking up he invited me to sit down.
Nervous about wasting my 5 questions I started to ask him about the protesters outside and the accusations they were accusing them of.

He rolled his eyes and said "We dont' pay much attention to them. You see they are bad people. They are interested in keeping people sick, bound and ineffective, whereas we are interested in making people healthy, free, able and effective."

Turns out he had been a scientologist for 35 years. Almost since it's inception.

He then went on to explain what Scientology has done for society and all the good it does, and said "Would you want to associate yourself with people who are against drug rehabilitation?? Physical healing? Converting criminals into helpful members of society?"

I stayed interested, open and humble, so I managed to earn the guys trust enough for him to be willing to answer a lot more than 5 questions.
As we were talking about how they treat the members who leave or get excommunicated a guy comes up to me and says "Can you help me move some boxes??"

I followed him upstairs with some boxes full of L. Ron. Hubbard literature and as I turned the corner I saw this shady looking dude with a video camera poking through the blinds of an upstairs window pointed at the protestors.
We went past some sort of cult meeting where everyone was applauding every 2 minutes and making sculptures out of clay.
The old man met me on my way down.
"What's with the camera?" I asked.
He kind of laughed nervously. "Let's just say we like to know who our attackers are."

I was pretty sketched out and ready to leave, (not before flogging some free literature, coffee and assorted snacks of course) when I got outside I approached the protestors again.
"Man there is a creepy guy up there video taping you guys"
"...Yeah we figured they would probably be doing something like that. That's why we wear a mask"
"What are they going to do to you though, what are you afraid of?"
"We don't want to be called pedofiles, we don't want to be sued, we don't want death threats on our lives, we don't want what happened to other protestors to happen to us. "
"umm, I'm not wearing a mask is that going to be a problem"
"no you should be....." We look over at the church door to see 2 sets of glaring eyes in my direction, "oh Crap! Justin has seen you with us! They didn't get your name did they?"
"yeah they did"
"oh well....hopefully you'll be ok......."

I figured that was my cue to leave.
Bah, time for one last photo...

Hayley gets here in 2 days!

I can't wait. MEA MEA MEAAAAA

Jordan's Short Excursion to Bend, Oregon

So I was getting restless at school and felt like getting away. So I gave my buddy Scott in Oregon a call and flew out. (You remember him? From the epic camping trip in August 2006. Lived with him in Italy for 6 months in 2004. Life long friend that I apparently see every 2 years.)

I had fun, did lots of cool things. Don't really have the energy to tell the stories.

So to summarise: I went ...fishing.

...Canoe camping.

(We canoed to somewhere over there and then camped under the stars.)

...Dumpster Diving (or as they call it in Bend "Harvesting")

After 10 days I said goodbye to Scott. Our moochfest that seems to happen every 2 years was over and I sadly had to go back to school.

Suffice it to say that memories were made and others revisited.

I had a sweet adventure of sorts on my last day in Oregon as I wandered the streets of Portland by myself waiting for my plane.
It will have to wait for a later post.

The Failure of Christianity

I went to a soup kitchen yesterday in Oregon.
It was a very eye opening experience.

I was chopping mushrooms for over an hour next to the owner of the place and this was our conversation. (Jordan in Black, Soup kitchen lady in Red)

"So Where are you from?"
"New Zealand, but I'm studying at Bible College in North Carolina right now."
"Oh you want to be a preacher or something?"
"Well I'm not to sure. I'll probably go into ministry somehow but probably not in a church"
"Yeah I'm not a big fan of the church."
"Oh why is that?"
"They are all bunch of hypocrites. All talk no action."
"Yeah that is probably true for the most part."
"Listen here. Out of all the people that come in here and volunteer there isn't one 'religious' person who is faithful. The religous come in with all the right motives and then within 2 weeks I never see them again."
"Yeah, I've done that before. Quite a few times actually."
"You want me to believe in your God? Show me what he's like. If he's a anything like any of the Christians I've met with plastic smiles and a total apathy with regard to poor, I want nothing to do with that."
"Well I mean, God is actually nothing like that. It's just us that are like that. The bible actually speaks pretty strongly against how we live. We just dont do it."
"I am in here every week for 12 hours a week. I work my butt off and I know that there is no God"
"Can I ask you what your motivation is, if its not religion."

"I know what it's like. And I know that no one needs to go through what I went through.
When everyone around you including your partner leaves you. You cant get a job because your new born baby needs you. You can't pay rent or bills so they cut off your power. And you sit in the dark listening to the starving cries of your baby knowing there is absolutely nothing you can do to help her. Occasionally eating potatoes when you can.
When Christians don't give a crap, when Religious people ignore you, when even the government cuts off the welfare checks.
I vowed to never go back there, and to help anyone and everyone who is going through it once I got out of it.
Not everyone is a drug addict, and a thief here. The fact is life sometimes life craps on good people with good intentions.

"I can't imagine what that would have been like. I have been rich my entire life.

Is there any way you can help me? I am one of those selfish hypocritical christians you were talking about, who don't give a crap about the poor any more than having good intentions and talking about it a lot."
"Well I dont know if I can help you. The only people that help out here on a consistent basis are either people who have been in extreme poverty and are paying back and paying forward helping those who are where they used to be, or they are crooks paying off their community service hours."
"Well maybe I should move to the philippines and live in the slums for a while so I can really know what it's like."
"It wont work man. You will never ever experience poverty. Ever. You'll move to the philippines and yet the entire time you are there trying to be poor you know that you can get out of it any time you want at the snap of your fingers.
You could give mum a call and she'll bail you out. You could charge a hotel to your credit card. You have hundreds of friends you could call who would help you out in a second.
To really experience poverty you have to have absolutely no hope of ever getting out. Feel the absolute hopelessness of your existence and the abandonment of everyone who could help you.

Look outside I can introduce you to 5 or 6 people outside who are eating their meals who are deathly ill and are going to be dead within 6 months simply because they can't afford treatment.
Yeah they can be saved. If they had doctor's treatment, they would live longer, but they can't afford it. Show me a christian who is helping these people.
Show me one christian willing to pay for his medical bills."

What could I say? I sure wasn't willing to do it.

Craaaaaaaaaaaap

Traveling to Oregon in a couple of hours.

Haven't packed yet.


Where's Hayley when you need her??

Show of all shows: Mewithoutyou

After pining over the mewithoutyou website for the last 4 years for any sign of a show anywhere within hours of my location, finally my dream was fulfilled last night.

Me and Josh drove 2 hours north to the hippy town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

When we got out we went for a walk in this park. There were all these hippies with bare feet twirling hoolah hoops and dancing to a funk band. It was the weirdest and awesomest thing ever.
I was home.

There were hoolah hoops of all different colours and sizes and people of all ages joining in the madness.

What an appropriate setting for me to finally lay eyes on my favourite band of hippy hobo fregans*

I would like to think that it was only the hoolah hooping

that was making them happy. But I have a feeling lots
and lots of drugs may or may not be involved...

So we ate Wendy's and then went to hang out waiting for the band to start. I noticed the lead singer Aaron Weiss go for a walk with a few of his friends down the street. My first reaction was to stalk them but Josh restrained me. Later we decided to just go for a walk in his "general direction" and we realised that they were going dumpster diving. (Not 100% sure but what else would you do round the back of various food venues when you don't believe in buying food?)


2 sweet bands played before them. One of them called "maps and atlases" made me crawl home and cry at the thought of ever calling myself a musician. Quite possibly the best guitarists I had ever seen live. The band members were clearly all poindexters who did nothing but play guitar all day long and play video games, then try to make their music sound like nintendo.

We wore our famous hats (Josh's teacosy, and my hobo ski beany), that we wore in our shameless youtube mewithoutyou video, in the hope that some of our fans recognised us.

We pushed to the front row center and danced our faces off.
The show was amazing. Everything I dreamed of and more.
At some point in the night, a hobo passed Aaron a loaf of bread that I guess he had dumpster dived for, and he opened it up, and passed it to me to share with the crowd.

Then at the end, me and Josh went out to see if we could talk to him.
Josh felt like he was supposed to give his Red tea cosy to Aaron and so we walked up to him. The first thing he said after we introduced ourselves was:
"Well now, thats an interesting hat you have there"
Josh took it off his head and offered it to him and he immediately put it on and wore it for the rest of the night saying he really liked it.

We asked him a few questions about life and God and the guy absolutely blew me away. He spoke with us and a crowd of people (wearing the tea cosy) for over half an hour about his experience, what he thinks the gospel means and how we are to live in complete sacrificial love for each other without any selfishness.
Stuff like that, that I know. And completely don't live at all.

The guy was so genuine. Super honest, and genuinely is living out what he believes. What kind of rockstar plays a super energetic show and then spends hours afterwards pouring his heart out to people and spending quality time with anyone that wants to.

Everything he said was exactly what I needed to hear.

I never expected to go to a mewithoutyou show and come home completely convicted and feeling like I know absolutely nothing about life and God.

*FREGAN: a term for radical people who dont believe in really buying anything as much as can be helped. They dumpster dive for food and give all their money to the poor. Convert their car to biofuel and jump fences and steal old vegetable oil to take them places. Basically a rebellion against the consumerism slowly destroying the western world.

Moustache Modular Week

It's Moustache Modular week at Fire. So we got the whole school to go moustache only for a week in honour of Dr. Brown.

By whole school I mean my room mates, and a couple of others.

Dr. Brown said he was "honoured" by our efforts to look like him. 

Me and Paul (bottom right) were the only ones brave enough to last a full week.

Why are so many of my blogs facial hair related?

Do I have nothing better to do with my life than inform the world about when and in what way I am shaving?

That's it, I promise the next post will be meaningful/thought provoking etc.

How to figure out what you are supposed to do with your life:

What is the one thing that makes you most angry about this world?
What do you find yourself most complaining about?
What is the main injustice in life that you always moan to your friends about?

Figure that out, and then dedicate your life to lessening its effect on humanity.

I dont know what possessed us, but Josh convinced us to dress up like english school boys to go watch Prince Caspian the other day. 

....I dont regret it.

A few weeks ago I went to Asheville, North Carolina to see Brett Dennen and Missy Higgins play. Seeing 2 of my favourite artists together, needless to say was enjoyable.

I went with these 2 cats:

The Lion's name was Roger

On another note, I have just found out I am completely broke and am devising new ways to survive for the next 3 months. 

• Busking on the street for cash, (I made $20 last week, thats seriously my food for the month.)
• Dumpster diving, (Josh is working at walmart and he's going to give me the heads up when they are throwing out their fresh chicken
• Mooching off the fatcats. For example yesterday we went to an open home realty show and pretended to be interested in a house and got free cans of drink and all the hot dogs we could eat. 
• Mowing the lawns and Hacking people's iPhones for money when I can. 

I'm hoping to some how mooch enough money to go traveling for a week after school's out with Hayley. 

Hopefully going to go to New York and stuff, should be fun. 

This week is Nascar week for those who dont know. The biggest Nascar speedway in the south happens to be 10 minutes from my house. 

200,000 redneck Nascar fan pilgrims have travelled to the area from all over the states to watch a few races. I'm trying not to leave my house if I can...

For those who don't know anything about Nascar here is a video with some insight into how it works:

NASCAR Coach Reveals Winning Strategy: 'Drive Fast'

The Temporary End of My Bloggable Existence

I'm starting school tomorrow.
Which means my bloggable existence is over for now, as my life becomes a little more uneventful.

I'll let you know if anything interesting happens.

These are my old room mates 11 in total, (Josh wasn't there).



We moved to a smaller, more expensive place....
Yeah i dont really know why, but we did.
This time we only have 5 guys.



Oh and for those that haven't seen these yet. Here are a couple of short films I've made recently: