One Angry Monkey

Now the road is clear of rubbish and the Wombles are gone it’s apparently safe for the door-to-door salesmen to come out. Hooray. I think I preferred being mauled by packs of Wombles. These aren’t just any door-to-door salesmen. No insurance, no vacuum cleaners, no alarm systems, phone or electricity providers. I’m talking door-to-door religious salesmen. People who knock on your door and try to sell you something as intangible as faith.

I’m getting crankier in my old age and I’m starting to find the practice offensive and invasive. I don’t go door-to-door trying to sell people on the idea of agnosticism. I don’t hand out brochures on atheism. I don’t stop people in the street to try and talk to them about thinking for themselves instead of blindly following, especially when what they’re doing defies all logic.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Christians in general, or indeed the followers of any religion. I think that if that’s their choice then that’s their choice. So don’t go getting all up-in-arms. I have a live-and-let-live approach to religion.

That is exactly why these salesmen irritate me so much. I don’t bother you with my ideas of self-governing morality, being a good person for the sake of being a good person rather than to avoid going to Hell. So what gives these people the right to knock on my door when I’m in the middle of something and try to tell me my soul is being tainted by my godless ways?

Today it was the Mormons. I don’t know if they’ll come back. They may want to try and save the Man of the House. I hope they do. I’m going to set up a series of complex traps and pitfalls for them to negotiate. The final trap will be hooked up to the doorbell button (which isn’t connected to any bell so no great loss). When they press the button a giant, perfectly round boulder will fall from the roof and chase them down the road. Or squish them. Not my problem. Not theirs either. Lucky them, they get to go to Heaven early!

Anyway, as I said I was in the middle of something. I’d just pushed through a part I’d been particularly struggling with and was about to be On a Roll, when there was a banging on the front door. I rose with a growl and went to answer the door. There she was, armed with her bible and her brochures. Hi! I’m (who cares). I’m here to talk about the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

Ugh. I know what that is. Hell we used to live just down the road from a giant frigging gold building where you people gathered. It was like a mormon migration path there. I thought we were far enough out. Who knew they sent missionaries to the eastern suburbs?

She was in the middle of her spiel, that fanatical light in her eyes religious people always seem to get shining fit to light up half of Adelaide. I really wanted to get back to what I was doing before the moment was lost. I interrupted. The fanatical light sputtered out and she looked at me resentfully. How dare I interrupt her while she’s “working”? I said that, honestly, I thought she was wasting her time. How can I be sure?

I blinked. You knocked on my door, lady.

If someone wandered into the woods and came back proclaiming he’d discovered gold tablets with a whole new gospel on them I’d be doubtful. If he said he was the only one who was allowed to see them I’d be skeptical. If he said they told him he was allowed more than one wife but it didn’t go the other way — only one husband for the ladies — I’d be laughing.

I drove off a mormon! Me! I could see her edging away, eager to be gone before God decided to visit his wrath upon my household. She left and I shut the door (and locked it just in case there were still Wombles out there) with a warm glow of satisfaction in my chest. I drove off a mormon! They’re usually impossible to get rid of. And I have yet to be struck by lightning, plagued by a swarm of locusts or rained on by frogs.

28 years old and still not smitten.

One thing I learned during my time in retail was that people don’t read. Oh sure, maybe I’d think differently if I’d worked in, say, a bookstore, but somehow I doubt it. You see I’m one of those people who likes to read every word they come across. The more I read, the more I know. I like to know things. I think it’s an off-shoot of my collecting-stuff issue. I know it, it’s mine.

Normal people, ie people not me, seem not to do that. When I was in the deli I lost count of the number of times a customer came up to the front of the counter and asked how much (insert product here) was despite the fact there was an A4-sized sign standing between them and me proclaiming the price in great, big letters. When I was on checkout it was the same but with the “Sorry I’m closing” or “12 items or less” signs. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I had a real wake-up call. I was forcibly made aware of exactly how insidious reality TV has become. It all started, as so many things do, with Letterman. Read the rest of this entry »

Brendan is a huge fan of anything that doesn’t have a storyline. You know, documentaries, stuff like that. One of his favourites would have to be “Air Crash Investigation”. We were watching it this evening (mighty generous of me I must say) and something occurred to me. There is something really, really strange about humans.

You see one person who had been on the plane in question was saying that during the freefall he made his peace with God. That was a real “what the hell?” moment for me. If I believed in God, which I’m not convinced that I should, I would not be saying, “yes, I’m looking forward to meeting you, Lord. I am ready!” There’s no way. You see, if I believed in God, I would also have to believe that God was responsible for bringing down the plane on which I was currently sitting, crapping myself.

I’d be thinking, “You son-of-a-bitch.”

Well for my reading pleasure the Australian government’s drug brochure arrived in the mail yesterday. Of only, right? No, it’s a booklet on how to talk to your kids about drugs. There goes that 17 billion surplus they were so worried about. Thank God they didn’t put that into education or hospitals. It started off badly, with a “personal” letter from our beloved prime minister. “Dear fellow Australian,” full marks for the attempt to imply some sort of camaraderie. It does, however, read like you and he are the only Australians in existence. That might not have detracted too much if I was actually Australian. Read the rest of this entry »

As I get older I find I’m getting crankier. I wouldn’t have even thought that possible but there you go. That’s not the first time I’ve been wrong but it’s one of the only times I’ve ever admitted it. The problem is that I seem to be losing my once healthy apathy. There were things which would have pissed me off just as much when I was younger, if I’d only cared. Now I’m finding that I care. Read the rest of this entry »

I must admit, and this is a big one for me because I have difficulty admitting a failure to understand anything, I am completely mystified about human social behavior. Not all of it, some is blindingly obvious. There are some stumbling blocks though. For example, why in the nine circles of Dante’s Hell do people talk to me? Read the rest of this entry »