Like Jenny Diski, I was half hoping that the Rapture would arrive as advertised. Unlike her, I spent Judgment Day in Oakland, California, just a few miles from Harold Camping's radio ministry. When the day came and went I drove out there, though there's nothing really to see.

Were you looking forward to it? Just a little bit? In spite of yourself? Well, perhaps it's just me, but there's something about finality. All that goes-round-comes-round gets wearing after a few decades. My sense of potential completion depended, of course, on not being one of the Elect. Imagine. There it is, the End of Days and damn me if it's not all starting again - perfect, obviously, but still, starting again. I had no fear though, being a firm unbeliever. So six o'clock Saturday comes and goes, and shows every sign of coming again next Saturday. I'm not alone in my disappointment.

There are too many people on the planet, and that is why we are out there drilling at 5000 feet in the Gulf of Mexico. There are too many people, and it is not at all an acceptable thing to say so. The Left doesn’t like it, neither does the Right, in so far as those quaint terms are relevant in this context. And the Catholic Church really, really doesn’t like it. There are too many of them, to be sure, spitting betel juice and flipping tortillas all the live long day; but there are also too many of us, fussing with our handheld whatevers as we jostle one another amid the stalls of Camden Town or pour off the N-Judah streetcar at day’s end, down the block from me here in San Francisco, where a great deal of tortilla flipping goes on and, doubtless, the more than occasional instance of betel juice expectoration.