I have it on good authority that a shadowy ghost with snap snap snapping fingers is haunting our house, and he is probably the one who caused both of our lovely new high-efficiency heat pumps to fail on the same hot day. He is probably the one, too, who made one of them leak through the ceiling into the clothes closet, and he is probably the one, too, who lured those preposterous Jehovah’s Witnesses to our neighborhood this morning. I loathe the Jehovah’s Witnesses as much as I would any band of lunatics who go door to door. They are not alone in this category, as my time in downtown Baltimore has shown, but they are the worst. For one thing, I think it’s an absolutely unforgivable sin to bother people in their homes, and this goes for phone solicitation, junk mail, and other intrusions, as well. I have enough problems without worrying about who is lying in wait on the other end of the phone or on my porch. Secondly, the goal of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is to convert people to their religion by exposing them to propaganda in their own vestibules. I think religion is ridiculous, but would it not be doubly so if someone’s entire view of the universe could be changed by a badly designed pamphlet? Bring me something by Chip Kidd, and we’ll talk armageddon, but until then, mind your own fucking business. Thirdly, I knew a girl in high school who was a Jehovah’s Witness, and she wasn’t allowed to have any birthday parties or celebrations of any kind because these were dismissed as evil. So what these people are doing is going door to door in an attempt to steal the joy out of everyone’s lives and replace it with their own tedious existence. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are the Anti-Gay in more ways than one.

The worst part about the Jehovah’s Witnesses is that they know people despise them and they do it anyway. Doors are slammed in their faces, dogs are sicced on them, and they are insulted left and right. There are plenty of people who get this treatment who don’t deserve it because they’re just trying to live their lives and want to be left alone, but the minute you try to tell other people how to live their lives, I say bring on the boiling oil. I think the Jehovah’s Witnesses welcome this reaction because they’ve woven it into their mythology of righteousness. If they stayed in their Jehovah’s Witness Huts™ no one would care what they do, but if they can provoke antipathy from as large a swath of the world as possible, it feeds their masochistic impulses. They are Suffering For Christ, who is sure to reward them with a big Birthday Party in the Sky. (It says in the bible that birthday parties aren’t evil after you die.)

I know I’m being uncharitable, but it’s all the shadowy ghost’s fault. If you had to stay home and wait for The Repairmen Who Never Came, you’d be bitchy, too.