It’s not easy being Jehovah’s door to door salesmen
(They really are out to get us…)
Now, I’m sure it’s hard to be one of God’s chosen. Hell, ask the Jews…
It must be particularly hard though to be one of those select few who think it is their duty to tell their less fortunate brothers and sisters about Whatever The Particular Brand Of Truth Of The Week is.
Just imagine: It’s another Sunday morning, on the foul side of dawn, and your alarm goes off like a demented angel, telling you it’s time to rise and shine…
… and tell the heathen hordes about WTPBOTOTW is…
… and get door after door after door slammed into your face. So, it’s no wonder that some of these Chosen Ones go slightly mad - or screaming, bark-biting & gun-toting insane, of course:
“Two Jehovah’s Witnesses have been accused of murdering 13 people on a mad “mission from God”. Vladimir Gurianov, 44, and Elvira Egorycheva 46, are said to have hacked, bludgeoned and shot their innocent victims in a nine-month killing spree.”
It would make for a nice old-fashioned Hollywood B-movie. Quentin Tarantino meets ‘They came from outer space’ or something like that.
To be honest, two people only managing to hack, bludgeon & shoot 13 people in nine whole bloody months is a bit lame. Your average American school kid can easily kill as many within nine minutes or so.
Still, Russian madmen may, as of yet, not be as streamlined & efficient as their American counterparts but you can see that Russia is fast becoming as capitalistic and entrepreneurial as the USA.
This from the same article:
“They also robbed their victims on “God’s orders”. Gurianov told detectives after his arrest: “God told us to go and take the money. He said, ‘Go there and take as much as you need’. So we did.””
Yes, when even your orthodox Russian Mad Hatters are having at least one wild and wide open eye for the main chance, you can truly say that the old, Communist spirit, like Elvis, has left the building.
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February 1st, 2009 at 20:53
Nine months? That’s not a killing spree, that’s a strategic campaign of highly targeted assassinations. A spree is something that only takes a few hours at most, you can be done in time for tea.
February 1st, 2009 at 21:12
Thanks for the comment - and you’re absolutely right, of course. You wouldn’t call a pregnancy a ‘one baby spree’. It’s simply lazy journalism and I should have mentioned that, perhaps, in the column (though my comparison with an American school shooting could already, implicitly, be seen as such.)
Still, it’s always good to keep looking carefully at the language we use. Using cliché language is bad enough but doing so incorrectly is inexcusable.
(My pet hatred is the casual use of the word ‘decimated’, which can only mean ‘one in ten being killed’, while it’s being used for any serious amount of people getting killed.)
J.