Complex Numbers

Shoulda Known Better

Almost makes me want to believe in karma. I've been ranting about thumpers (I'm done, for now, by the way. I'll find something else to rant about soon enough. Maybe politics. Yeah.) and sure enough...

I'm eating breakfast this morning when there's a knock on the door. Two kids in suits. Mormons, I think. Well, I'll be polite; Mormon missionaries don't usually annoy me, and they rarely press the issues. As a fine, upstanding non-church-goer, I'm wearing sweats and my Writing.com Convention 2006 T-shirt on a Sunday morning - my own version of evangelism.

But when I open the door the taller one's holding a copy of the New Testament (I'm not sure which translation) and The Watchtower.

Oh no, I think. Jehovah's Witlesses.

Am I prejudiced? When it comes to door-to-door religion salesmen, yeah, I'm prejudiced.

"There's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world," says the guy with The Watchtower. "Have you ever stopped to consider how a just and loving God can allow such atrocities to occur?"

"Yep, and I think I've got it pretty much figured out," I say. What I don't say is that there's nothing going on in the world that can't be attributed to a combination of semi-random acts of Nature and willful acts of twisted human Nature.

Meanwhile, my cat's stropping my shins. The door's open, because I'm not about to let these guys in to see my rather eclectic home decorations (a machete from Afghanistan, a Turkish prayer rug with the Kaaba featured prominently; a pentagram plaque; graven images everywhere) but fortunately, it's another fine January summer day. Did I wake up in Australia? Point is, I was eating breakfast.

My wife comes to the door in her bathrobe, which is open in front. She's even wearing clothes, almost. "Look, thanks for coming by, but I'm in the middle of breakfast," I say

"Well, we won't take any more of your time, then. Have a wonderful day." And they leave without even looking at my wife. Now that was almost insulting. So was their failure to offer me a Watchtower - I like to read while I eat, and I can't read my Calvin and Hobbes collection at breakfast, because I spew my food all over it when I inevitably laugh.

So that's it - no more thumper rants for a while. I figure it's safe to go off on politics; the next election's far enough away that they probably won't be going door to door for a while.