I tend to think that whether or not you believe there’s a God is less important than what kind of God you envision. After all, it’s not like searching for Bob, where you have a name and just need to find whether someone answers to it. Here what you imagine you’re searching for will largely determine what you find. For some, God lies in everything around them. For others, the divine is anything but the perceptible–it’s like the hole in which our universe rests. I would give you my opinion about the merits of these views, but I’m still trying to apply for my Russian visa, and I’m not sure which direction they’re leaning these days there.

And that process already has enough pains. For instance, I have to get an AIDS test to apply for the visa. Apparently testimonials from ex-girlfriends aren’t enough. This requirement is all backwards though. Americans should be testing Russians when they come here, not the other way around, since it’s Russia that’s the AIDS cesspool that has managed to become practically the only place outside the damp bit of Africa to have a male life expectancy under 60 and a rising rate of HIV infection.

On the other hand, there’s not much point in getting old in Russia since old people there are completely worthless after being pressed for their entire lives into a mold that’s the complete opposite of anything that might be needed to make money and survive independently. Of course the old have trouble communicating across the generations in any society. Life is like a pool with parallel lanes and the elderly are like the 400-lb.-dead-lifting East Germans that have almost reached the finishing point at the far end and for someone like me, the Equatorial Guinean that doesn’t even have a pool to practice in and who’s still back near the starting line, has to shout even to make himself heard by them that far away. No wonder they usually have a hard time hearing.

In any event, fortunately we are spared the fate of Russia by a nimble army of great-hearted warriors of freedom, namely the ACLU. Just today I saw a flyer of theirs advertising internships with the slogan: “Because civil liberties can’t defend themselves.� Since, in keeping with current advertising-slogan fashion, that’s neither a complete sentence nor a complete thought, I think they should have added: “they need the high ethical standards of the legal profession looking after them.�