Feeling: hounded
Listening to: Default - Who Followed Who (I am so addicted to the guitar riffs in this song)
Reading/Watching: I FINISHED THE ENTIRE TRILOGY!! Woo for the legitimization of my Tolkien fan status!

So the Big Organized Collection of Jewish People Somewhere has begun sending me newsletters.

I'm not sure why they're contacting me, unless somehow I wound up on a mailing list because I'm on the payroll at the synagogue, but now I get newsletters. Earlier this year, they sent me cute little return-address labels, which I use because I am too lazy to write out my own address, and they have pretty pictures of birds on them. Enclosed with the "free" address labels, there was a letter asking for a contribution to their generous Big Organized Jewishness.

A few months later, I got the calendar. A fancy, shiny, colorful Jewish calendar with pretty pictures of Jewish people and Jewish things like Torah scrolls and fancy yarmulkas and adorable little Jewish babies, and the enclosed letter asking for my contribution to their humble Big Organized Jewishness.

Yesterday, there was yet another letter, reminding me "We gave you a calendar and we hope you liked it, and we hope your check just got lost in the mail because we're humbly waiting (but not asking) for your donation, which can be any amount, we don't have a preference *cough25dollarscough*."

It's beginning to make me feel guilty and greedy, and dammit, I'm not even Jewish. Is that allowed? Am I sinning or something weird if I refuse to give money to a religion I don't even belong to? I mean, I don't put any money in the offering plate at the Orthodox church either, and it's just a hopskipjump away from being Catholic.

I comfort myself with the simple, coverall statement that I am a "poor college student," and for the moment, I'm more fit to receive than give charity. That tends to satisfy most people.

Of course, the more practical part of my mind knows that if I do give in and send them money, the handful of gadflies will turn into a swarm of locusts. And me without my bug spray.

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