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For starters, I get strange phone calls on my home phone from random churches. It almost always starts out this way:

Me: Hello?

Them: Hello, can I speak to the master of the house?

(I am not making that up - master of the house? What is this, late 14th century?)

Me: Uhhh, that would be me, I think.

(Not that a whole lot of thought is required, considering that I live alone — not counting the three people that live in my head, of course.)

Them: May I ask what church you belong to?

Me: Errr, no church whatsoever.

(Considering that I am agnostic, I am not particularly religious.)

Them: Do you know that your soul is in great peril? You may suffer eternal damnation for your sins.

Me: Whoa! Wait a minute there buddy, before you go damning me and my soul for all of eternity.

(They all do this — every one of them. What on Earth do they have against my soul?)

Them: The only way you can salvage your soul is through Jesus.

Me: Oh that’s nice to hear, how’s he doing these days?

Them: Excuse me?

Me: Never mind.

Them: Okay. But there is a way to save your soul. Our church can help you save your soul.

Me: Wait, I thought Jesus would help save my soul, not your church.

Them: Yes, but you can only attain Jesus through our church.

Me: What the hell, do you have some sort of monopoly on him or something or what?

Them: Jesus belongs to everybody.

Me: So why are you trying to sell him to me? What are you, Judas?

(By this time, I have somehow managed to piss him off.)

Them: I would appreciate it if you did not talk to us that way.

(I have no idea why they all have to use “us” to address themselves — is that the royal us, or the Goa’uld us?)

Me: Oh, sure. Not a problem. I’d appreciate it if you really did not get me out of my sleep at 8 in the morning.

(This is when they start spewing forth some random quote from the Bible about seeing the lord early sabbath day. Yawn.)

Me: Uhh, I really need to go now.

Them: You are living in sin! Your soul is damned! You are going to hell! You should repent!

Me: Dude, you don’t understand. I know that I am living in sin. I actually happen to enjoy it.

Them: I can only hope that you find salvation one day.

Me: Oh dude, you have no idea. Some days, I find salvation in the oddest of things. Just the other day, there was this chick at this party…

*click*

Now, here is the thing — I do not like being offensive to religious people. Really, I do not. Mostly because they have my best interest in mind (i.e. my soul is going to hell, and they are trying to help me in the way that they believe in). I am totally fine with whatever they want to believe, as long as they do not try and tell me that somehow my belief (or rather, the lack of any) is wrong.

So, I try being polite and nice — even though I really do not give a damn. But they just don’t get it. When you are trying to be polite and not be offensive, they just keep going and take it as a sign that you are open to their ideas. And they say that I am going to hell while they are the ones who keep sentencing some obscure part of me to hell every other minute. What’s wrong with these people?!

Now, on Orkut, I have random people sending me messages. They keep spamming me, giving me random quotes and proselytising. I also get random e-mails, phone calls and assorted rubbish.

So, could proselytisation be considered spam?

Of course, I know that spam is technically termed UCE or UBE — Unsolicited Commercial or Bulk Emails — but this is the exact same thing. I wonder what the legality of this really is.

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