** The main thing that occupies my attention when I think of blogs is the fascination people have with religion. I want to stomp my feet and bang my fist and say that I know FROM EXPERIENCE that it is all bullshit. Just because you FEEL better knowing that there is a benevolent force operating in your favor in the universe, doesn't make it so. There is no such thing. We have no allies but each other – for whatever that is worth. You don't have to LIKE truth to believe in it. I hate it that there's no imaginary friend to lift me up and out of the human condition. It gives me NO COMFORT AT ALL to believe that everything that pains me is an illusion. Pain is painful, and I know pain. I don't like it. Religion, spirituality, belief, faith – whatever you want to call it – is just a DRUG. I know about drugs and I use them. But at least I know they are drugs and that they are altering my perception of the world. And at least for a time the sense of pain is dulled. But religious fanatics don't know that. They think that to believe in the ridiculous is enough to prove that what they believe is actually real. Life is awful – and to expect to survive it is folly.