Here I go again, I''m almost broke, and lonely for almighty dollars! I''ve got to get out of my subjective state of mine and be as objective as I can before I wind up on the street and have no choice but to get down to the dirty details.

Fortunately, the big thing today is to "be objective," so I should not have much of a problem picking up a few bucks here and there. Being objective according to the doctrine of unlimited production and consumption is the ideology of our time. And remember, time is money. After all, a hundred bucks received is better than being the recipient of prayer any time. A man is desperate, he needs money, and he gets "I''ll pray for you." That''s because Jesus is his only true friend, not the hypocrites who say they believe in Jesus then turn their heads the other way to pray for the needy instead of helping them out.

Yes, indeed, money talks louder than words in this day and age. Money is, for all practical intents and purposes, God, the very medium of every substantial exchange. The less money I have, the lonelier for dollars I get. I must get down on my knees tonight and pray to Money for money, or listen to my special tapes of someone whispering into a constantly flushing toilet: "You deserve to have a lot of money and you will get money to burn." Rephrase that better effect: "I deserve to have a lot of money and I will have money to burn." Talk about selling one''s soul to the Devil! I would sell my body too, but the women I have in mind are not responding to my advertisements yet - I don''t know why, as I am excellent company to just have around and more faithful than a dog when treated right. People who treat me right, but the way, are righteous; I mean they''re all right because they treat me right! 

Things sell for a certain price, but the personal I counts for nought, or 0, therefore I hope the reader will forgive me for using the first-person pronoun. The first person is of course an illusion, a trick to keep us going. Apparently, no matter what I think, I do not really exist. At most I am maya or myth, and at least, I am nothing. That is, I am nobody. Therefore nobody need be offended by my opinions on anything at all, because nobody knows nothing. This truth was expressed by someone who called into the Larry King Show to point out that the guest knew nothing about his subject matter because he constanty used the "unscientific expression, the first-person, I, when expressing his opinion." It seems only the impersonal, third-person is a true scientist.

As for this phenomenon called thinking, perceived as language - I cannot say with any certainty what it is. Postmodernists seem to suppose that it is performed by the Universe of Discourse, whatever that is. In any case, if I did exist, I could only play an infinitessimal bit-part for which I would not be entitled to significant credit. That is why I am occasionally impressed by the grandeur of my insignificance. That being said by way of forewarning, I must confess that my loneliness for dollars led to some sinful thinking last Saturday. 

I like to walk the four miles to Borders on Ala Moana Boulevard for coffee every Saturday morning. That is, until The Management stopped allowing people to get their own free refill. The beancounters figured people were abusing the one-refill privilege; they couldn''t figure out that raising the price a nickel would cover the pilferage and keep the few customers in our democracy who still like to be trusted and to do things themselves.

Two groups were always around two Border cafe tables last Saturday morning. The bible-study group brought a bible, and the investor''s club brought a laptop computer. The members of the former group discussed God, the members of the latter discussed Money.

The value of the spiritual exchange seemed to be defined by one man who dominated the bible-study group. He often spoke firmly about vague ideas or idols - the ''Lord'', ''heaven'', ''humility'', ''the sin of pride'', ''eternal life'' and such. At the other table, the value of the exchange - the monetary exchange - did not depend on the subjective authority of any particular member of the investment club, but rather on the objective returns on investments calculated on the laptop. The results displayed on the screen were objectively meaningful to them because consumers have a general idea of what sort of things certain sums of money can buy. Of course I do not mean to say that wealthy people know the price of a pound of potatoes or a tin of shoe polish. Or that poor people know the price of a Rolls or a yacht - they may know if they are enrolled in an excellent success-motivation course or have one of my flushing-toilet subliminal tapes.

I received the impression that the topic of the spiritual group was not an object at all, was not something everybody could see or objectively agree on, but was instead the incomprehensible subject of their subjectivity; perhaps, I thought, of the non-existent I that I am sometimes enamoured with. The egotistical I who is not really an objective whom, but is an iconoclastic I AM, or Nothing free from everything, or absolute power. Now the bible students repeatedly referred to a subject who is, paradoxically, somehow indefinite and singular and male: namely, ''God''; who, being really nothing in particular, is virtually synonymous with ''Nothing.''

I was moved to inquire into the etymology of ''God'' at Borders, and found a book appertaining thereto on the shelves: godd, got, godh, guth, ghuta, gud, goth. The pagan root was originally neuter, connoting plural heathen deities; but the Christians converted the Teutonic term, derived from Sanskrit and its precedents, to the masculine singular. "God" is apparently the poetic expression or projection of the highest tribal chief, the head man, who gradually become invisible and incomprehensible because, otherwise, he could be defeated. ''God'' seems to have always been a term used to invoke or voice the ruler-concept projected as deity, and has no connection whatsoever with the root of "good", derived from words meaning "gather" and "together" - "goods" in the sense of property appeared about C.E. 1280.

Of course any sign is arbitrary in itself. X would serve the personal purpose as well if it were not habitually associated with the impersonal Unknown standing for every possibility and therefore nothing in particular. Yet many men, and even women, sad to say for femininists, must have a man for a god, something visible or imaginable in place of the unknown X; say, a man on the cross, or a man who is the cross; just as evolved hippopotamuses might need a Hippopatamus in water for their god. Mr. Wang, the god-man, is Mr. King, the link between Heaven and Earth. But even the man of highest rank suffers as a consequence of his limiting attributes, whereas God is absolute freedom, power unimpeded; hence definitions of God, even the bare personification of X, are blasphemous in the sense that the power of the all-defining, indefinite I is used to destroy I, and, at the same time, to alienate man. He is a self-crucified criminal, an idol-maker, an idolator, an ideologist of the partial over the whole. Ideology in the sense not of the science of ideas but in the sense of a particular ideology is idolatry, the worship of death, of the static. Man''s every effort to manufacture a "good" god in his own imperfect image, and to use his verbal fragments as foundation stones for a bureacracy, is absurd. His enterprise is by definition doomed from the start. The true relation between X and man is so intimate that anything said about "God" diminishes and ruins the relation.

And what do I know of God? Absolutely nothing. Therefore I am somehow qualified by ignorance to think about the subject. Certified theological idolatry would certainly scoff at my musings, and what I might say out loud about God is not worth a nickel in the offering plate, so there goes my ministry. I was tempted to interject my opinion about nothing at Borders, but I decided that I should keep my mouth shut about religion and think about the dollars I was lonely for. Still, I could not help listening in on the conversation of the bible-study group that sat to my right, and something in what they said urged me to confess my thoughts later, in writing, hence this nonsense before you.

As I listened in, "God" occurred to me to be a suitable expression for the mysterious Super-I ''who'' is too powerful to be pinned down and unmasked. If ''he'' were unmasked, I thought, surely he would be a weakling, just an average man, a nobody - of course there is no such average man, and a real man might give me a good licking. In any case I was highly amused by the obvious assumption of authority by the man dominanting the group, especially when he preached humility and the sin of pride at length, and insisted that there was "only one way to eternal life." The others nodded in agreement, and I noticed that they chimed in according to a definite pecking order.

Perhaps it was the caffeine, but the scene at the bible-study table seemed entirely absurd to me in comparison to the money-table scene. To be frank, money-grubbing stock-market players disgust me - perhaps because I am a sore loser. But at Borders I was favorably impressed by the greedy lot.

By the way, I felt sorry for an author who was sitting at another table: he discovered to his scarcely concealed chagrin that only one person had showed up for his book-signing. And he did not get to sign a single book because that person talked to him about the book for over an hour, but did not buy it or the coffee. Too bad. 

"Alas, I think I am becoming postmodern or something," I dictated to inner secretary. "The people in the bible-study group are trying to be secure gods because they are really insecure nobodies. I really don''t blame them as I know how they feel. ''God'' is a collective projection of non-existent is, The I. There is nothing owned inside, and everybody is just another object subject to or thrown down under a incomprehensible, complex rug of forces. Life tricks nobodies into thinking they are somebodies then dumps them. The best one can do is to be as objective as one can, to grab as many objects one can get ahold of just to get one''s bearings until kicking the bucket. I think the kids with the laptop have got it right. This is not the Middle Ages. Money counts, money is god. They are being objective because money can buy anything, including love. So let this be a lesson to me, that I should calculate the probabilities and take the risks. That''s life. Just accept it."

That lesson lasted for a New York minute, until it dawned on me that I did not want to be a member of the bible-study group nor the investors'' club. Not that I really believed there was really anything wrong with either group - I was just speculating over my coffee. Quite to the contrary. That''s how people are. They have their cultures to enjoy, and there sat I, an outsider, criticizing them. What do I expect them to do, anyway, admit that life is meaningless and go home and slit their wrists or put plastic bags over their heads?

"If only I were a member of a group," I concluded my dictation, "I would be less critical of a few people. As it is, I am vain, that''s what I am, just a good for Nothing nobody. Maybe there is a group for me somewhere. Maybe I could make my fortune hawking Nothing."