When you live in North Carolina, it's not infrequent that zealots of one denomination or another call you to your door to try to dump on your belief system and coerce you into adopting theirs through some wacky argument. These people are, undoubtedly, low motherfuckers, but I've always felt too uncomfortable and polite to not give them the what-for that they really deserve for such an intrusion. But today, reading Daniil Kharms, I found the ideal response and suggest that everyone memorize it in order to have it handy or else print it on a little card that you can keep by the door:

"There exist impolite actions. It is impolite to ask a man to loan you fifty rubles if you saw that he just put two-hundred in his pocket. It's his business whether to give you the money or to decline and the most convenient and pleasant way to decline is to lie that you have none. You've seen that this man has the money and thereby you have stripped him of the opportunity to simply and pleasantly decline. You have stripped him of his right to choose, and that's rotten. It is an impolite and tactless act. And to ask a person 'Do you believe in God?' is also an impolite and tactless act."