Every now and then I check out my column on this handy-dandy invention called “”The Internet”” for the sole purpose of reading the comments of Ben Boychuk and people like him. Their comments stress an important point: They could really care less about events from my personal life, and would much rather hear about important topics like religion and politics. Well, you know how the saying goes: Be careful what you wish for …

Almost everything I know about religion and politics comes from a song called “”Religion and Politics”” by a band from England called Urban Species, which is sort of a cross between De La Soul and watching the movie “”Snatch.”” You get to hear black people talk with British accents, and that seems to be rather amusing to me, probably because I haven’t spent extensive time in England. I highly recommend you pick up their cd, “”Blanket,”” when you get a chance. Everything else that I know about religion and politics is pure bullshit on my part. I grasp at conversations that I’ve heard, or brief chunks of articles I’ve read, or a small rambling on the part of one of my professors. The reason for this is that religion and politics really bore the hell out of me.

I don’t read newspapers or watch the 11 o’clock news. I don’t subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, nor do I enjoy political cartoons with my coffee for breakfast. I don’t eat breakfast; I rarely wake up before noon, and when I do, I’ll have some fountain Coke at my local drive-thru that defaults to it because Coke in a can isn’t nearly as good. Coke in a bottle is a separate joy altogether, but since it’s rather expensive for a mere 8-ounce bottle, I try to reserve that for special occasions.

I find that people who discuss religion and politics, especially at lunch time, are annoying. They interrupt a perfectly good bagel and cream cheese. I had a really good bagel once. I went “”all out”” and got a bagel with lox and lox-flavored cream cheese. The double salmon really did the trick.

Have you ever noticed that people who discuss religion and politics aren’t really discussing religion and politics at all? It’s usually this pseudo-lecture with a lecturer and a lecturee. The lecturer is going off about something he read in that morning’s paper or heard on that morning’s talk show, and the lecturee is sort of nodding with his eyes glazed over realizing why this seat wasn’t taken.

Whenever I’m forced into participating in a conversation about religion and politics, I pretend to care while I juggle imagining threesomes with girls of different hair colors (blonde, redhead and brunette — it comes out to a lot of combinations) and pulling tidbits from classes I failed on government and American history. Then, when the time comes for me to speak, I’ll somehow relate whatever it is they were talking about with either:

a) Manifest destiny/Imperialism

b) What a bastard Nixon really was

c) Some speech about how it isn’t a waste of a vote to vote Libertarian, which I heard from one of my friends once and nodded a lot during

Surprisingly, you can relate any one of these three topics to whatever anyone ever says about politics; much the same way you can relate any literature topic to “”Hamlet,”” “”Brave New World”” or “”1984.””

Religion, on the other hand, seems to be more of a taboo subject. Even those who drone on about politics stay away from it because they know it’s touchy with some people. The only real thing people can discuss are commonly accepted crackpot religions like Scientology, as opposed to selectively accepted crackpot religions like Christianity. But then again, there’s only so many times you can talk about alien rulers named Xemu and projecting images of Jesus Christ and Tom Cruise and Giovanni Ribisi before the whole subject becomes as tired as the original religion debate.

This is why I would never subject my readers to an entire column about religion or politics, or much worse, a combination of the two. Because I don’t know a damn thing about either. But that’s not the only reason. Even if I knew something about one or the other, I wouldn’t write about it. I know a hell of a lot about relational databases and Web programming, but you don’t see me writing columns about them. Because they’re boring. Because they’re not interesting. Because columns are not influential. Because even if they were, you wouldn’t see any of the results of it, because the only responses you’re going to get are people writing in saying, “”Nope. Didn’t convince me. This is how it actually is …”” These people are not cool. But let’s bend reality and pretend that columns are influential. Let me write a short column on how to be cool.

Being cool is not difficult. Take a minute and disregard three things that your parents told you, which is that drugs, sex and alcohol are bad. Take one of these things and really have a go at it. Go all out — dedicate some serious time and energy into it. It won’t make you cool, but all in all, it may make you less of an asshole.

There, now you have something to disagree with. But if you’re going to write in, please start with, “”Nope. Didn’t convince me. This is how it actually is ….”” Because “”Let’s dedicate newspapers to important topics like religion and politics”” is getting a little goddamn old. I’ll let you in on a little secret: Newspapers can also serve the purpose of entertainment. Crossword puzzles don’t inform or convince.