mormons
Bah. Here I am working in stripey loungey pants that make me look like I've escaped from a dire French Guyanan prison, and the Mormons come to the door to proselytize.
They were two younger women, I'd say around 25-27, in black overcoats, calling themselves Sister X and Sister Y (I forget their names). Sister Y, the follower, was Hispanic and silent, with her hair in a swooping Rachel do. Sister X, the leader, was blonde, blue-eyed, and EXTREMELY creepy as she talked with the wide-eyed calm earnestness of any cultish true-believer. I thought that my flat statement that "we're Jewish" would send the appropriate message, but upon reflection this response is more an incitement to these people to go after the unsaved. I might as well have told them the truth of my atheism, but then I think we might've been subjected to vigils and all sorts of repeated mischief.
And so I had to listen to an interminable 5-minute spiel about Jesus this and God's plan and Jesus Jesus Jesus. With a side order of Jesus. Oh, and I can get a free video! (I almost want to send away for it so I can tape over it with porn or something.) Too bad I was too annoyed to go into the threesome Mer and I had with God. This is not a good sign -- we haven't been bothered by the religious folks before now.
If you're looking at the church's metric of souls saved per hour, the single best way to get rid of proselytizers is to do what my dad does: greet them warmly at the door, invite them in, and proceed to argue with them, backed up by a wealth of facts at your disposal. Since my dad has a fair amount of time on his hands, a metric assload of books, a researcher's interest in religious history and teachings, a lot of education and an apartment that looks like a retired English professor's apartment should look, his arguments that the Lost Tribes of Israel are not in fact the American Indian native tribes, or that Mormons have an appalling history of racial prejudice usually make the clean crisp young men in their nice blue ties very antsy.
The Mormons and the Witnesses now leave him alone.
Honestly, my time is still too valuable to my corporate puppetmasters to do things like that.
But I really wish I could.