I'm putting off exercising and doing laundry and making myself look presentable. I really just want to take a nap, but I know I will pay later when I'm lying awake with my eyes as wide as saucers, inspecting the swirl pattern on the ceiling because the neighbors' flagpole light glares in our window much too much.

Hey, there's a hawk being pestered by about 20 little birds. Aren't you glad there aren't hawks to eat our eggs and babies? Or maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Since I seem to be having bad, bad thoughts, a terribly sensible but dreadfully blasphemous thought came to me the other day as I was reading an article about a new television show. It seems there is to be a new show about a teenage grim reaper, but don't ask me the name, channel, or anything like that, because it didn't sound interesting enough to me to matter. What did matter enough to read the whole article was the subject of the human fascination with the afterlife and how shows about that do pretty well. Basically, it said that we are interested in speculation on afterlife because we know nothing about it. People don't come back and tell you all about it, and there is no scientific evidence to prove anything. And it was that idea that prompted the devilish little thought in my head--there is no proof because there is no afterlife.

Now that isn't something I generally believe, because I'm like the majority of other people in that I don't want to just croak and have that be the end of it. My awareness and ego prevent me from subscribing to the athiest "death is final" point of view. But really, unless you've had your own personal ghostly experience, which might just be a manifestation of your own memory, nothing but religious writing proves we are going anywhere when our physical form expires. It makes perfect sense that there is nothing beyond death, so much sense that my stomach gets a crimp in it. We know nothing about life after death, because there is no life after death.

We are curious about an afterlife because it's unknown, and we want it to be true. Who really likes the idea of our entire existance amounting to a rotting corpse or pile of ash? Nietzsche basically said we depend on the idea of an afterlife to give our lives meaning. Can we bear the thought of knowing this is all there is?