.

In spite of my nihilistic tendencies, it may surprise you to know that I like to look after myself. Hence I avoid tobacco, coca cola, hamburgers, beef, pork, driving, commercial television and orgainised religion. I have my vices, but there has to be a limit. So I limit myself by avoiding all of the above. Yes in spite of my profession which is supposedly social I'm really a deeply anti-social individual. I prefer my own company to just about anyone else's. It doesn't take much before my so-called fellow humans shit me to the point where I agree with Sartre's maxim, "Hell is other people."

Organised religion. Someone, you know who you are, keeps dragging me along to Mass, as if that will somehow instill some kind of religious fervour in me. I think I'll only ever be a detached observer as far as Catholic ceremonies are concerned, as pretty as the ceremony may be in many ways. Yes it's a beautiful religion, as religions go. Only Islam and Hindu can really compete for aesthetic grandeur, far as this little skeptic is concerned. But anyway, I didn't grow up with it and I'm not really sure what to make of all that self-crossing, knee-bowing, phase-recanting caper that goes on. What is the point supposed to be? It seems to me that God made the world and all the people in it, if there is one, but the ceremonies of the Catholic Church are a strictly man-made business. If there is a God I just hope He's not as petty as some religious human beings would like to make out.